Cooking with Dry Beans and Peas

They improve the soil, they are delicious, they are nutritious, and most important of all, they are cheap. Let's celebrate the humble pulse.

Let's share recipes, talk about cooking tricks, nutrition, and yes, even growing dry beans and peas. What's your favourite variety? What's you most profound bean related experience? Do you have a bean related book you love?

Please share recipes. Especially recipes that highly the more frugal nature of dry beans and peas.




I grew my first dry beans and peas a couple of years ago. I was shocked with how easy it is to grow and harvest. It's the true do-nothing crop. Then, in the midst of my celebration, I realized one crucial thing. I had spent a year, planing and growing these pulses. Caught up in the enthusiasm, I never stopped to think how I was going to eat them. I had no idea how to cook them. I despaired. Then I got over it and learned how to cook dry beans.

First I started with Indian food and lentils. The recipe actually came from a nurse that was tending my Grandfather, who had recently immigrated from Northern India. Her recipe was very simple and delicious. It went something like this:

Indian Lentils: Wash some lentils and soak them while you prepare the other ingredients. Get an onion, leek or other similar thing, chop it up fine. Fry it in butter or ghee until translucent. Add garlic if you like. Chop up some herbs extra fine and add them, or use dry spices like turmeric (lots of this), cumin, salt and pepper. Add spices or herbs to the onions, stir it around a bit. Drain the lentils, add them to the pot. Just cover with fresh water, and cook until done.

So I did this, and within half an hour I had a big pot of what she called Doll (which I later learned was actually Dhal - my ears weren't use to her accent so that's why I got it wrong). Making this Dhal was revolutionary for me. I started cooking all sorts of pulses to discover what I liked.


I discovered that chickpeas, lentils and fava beans have a much easier to digest fibre than most other pulses. This is good to know if you are on a low fibre diet.

Chickpeas go amazing in a stir fry.

There are a lot of different 'right' ways to cook beans, and all of them work some of the time. None of them seem to work all of the time. But I love gathering up all the lore for cooking the perfect pot of bean.

Pulses are forgiving and far easier to cook than I originally thought.


One of the books that made a huge difference in my adventure with beans is The Resilient Gardener. Another was Hip Pressure Cooking (both book and website). We can even make our own Miso Paste from almost any kind of bean.

I got some neat ideas about Growing Fava Beans from the good people at permies.com (hey, that's you guys).

Once I made the decision to buy a pressure cooker, it changed how I approach beans in the kitchen. Before the pressure cooker, if I wanted to cook chickpeas, I needed to have a good 4 hours dedicated to the task. Pressure cooker does it in 14 min.

Another thing that has me very excited about beans is a new book that's coming out, The Power of Pulses. It's all well and good knowing that beans are healthy, good for you, good for the environment, and all that jazz. It's another thing knowing how to cook them. I really hope this book is going to be as good as it's hype.

Yet another fun thread about Growing Yellow Split Peas. Anyone ever done this? Maybe you can pop over there and offer some hints and tricks. I love split peas. They cook up so quickly and have a fantastic creamy texture.

Yes. Beans are a healthy choice that help fill you up without breaking the bank.

Years ago, I discovered the benefits of pressure cookers for beans.
It doesn't need to be an all day job !

As an alternative, start them early in a Crock-Pot.
Crock-Pot Bean Recipes

John Polk wrote:Yes. Beans are a healthy choice that help fill you up without breaking the bank.

Years ago, I discovered the benefits of pressure cookers for beans.
It doesn't need to be an all day job !

As an alternative, start them early in a Crock-Pot.
Crock-Pot Bean Recipes

I've been nervous to try slow cooking beans. My slow cooker does not bring food up to a vigorous boil, and without it I find beans difficult to digest. Your link has the solution. Bring the beans to a boil first, then put it all together in the slow cooker.

I'm off to soak some beans and give the slow cooker method a try.

I cook beans in my ricer cooker. Sometimes it takes two cycles, but it's not as big as my crockpot.

Freshness matters a lot in cooking time. Sometimes I splurge on Rancho Gordo beans and they cook up so fast, I don't even bother to soak them. The runner beans were really interesting and good. Rancho Gordo is doing a lot of good work with Mexican farmers to preserve their heritage bean lines.

Having tried a lot of varieties, and DH not an enthusiastic bean eater, we are leaning toward the Anasazi bean as our house bean, until I can get a crop of something growing here, and I might not bother. The Anasazis are coming from Dove Creek Colorado, practically neighbors and we can get them at our farm store. I don't have that much annual garden space, it seems like a reasonable thing to outsource. Carla Emery was careful to say in her Encyclopedia of Country Living that she did do most everything in her book, just not all at once.

If I lived on the east coast, I would be trying all the Maine and Vermont beans I could get my hands on.

As a farmer, and a grump today because I have a cold, I don't like teaching people how to cook. I'm a great cook, and enjoy cooking and talking about cooking, but it seems to me that the farmer's market isn't the proper venue for a farmer to be conducting cooking lessons. However, I make an exception whenever anyone says that they are going to get out the slow-cooker to cook beans. Beans contain a poison which is deactivated by boiling. Slow cookers can sometimes have a hard time reaching the poison's deactivation temperature. So I recommend simmering in a pot on the stove. Once the beans are thoroughly cooked, then is a good time to make chili or stew in a crock pot.

Another bean cooking fail that I see from time to time, is that someone grinds up dry beans to make flour, then they use the flour to make bread... That really accentuates the taste of the bean poison to me. Breads just don't get hot enough to deactivate the poison. So whenever anyone tells me that they are going to add beans to a bread, I recommend that they cook the beans first, and then mash them before adding to the bread.

Some beans are more poisonous than others. I don't try to figure out which is which, I just boil them all.

I'm currently growing 8 species of soup beans on my farm. I'm working on adding a few more. They get harvested in bulk and all jumbled together for cooking. I love that some types may have subtle differences in texture and flavor. Size varies a lot.

One of my favorite ways to eat beans is as shellies: bean seeds that are harvested while still wet. They cook in a few minutes. Lots of work to prepare though, and the season is short. Perhaps that's why I like them. It's so rare that I want to put in the effort.

Shelly Beans:

So glad you mentioned runner beans. I love them as dry and shelling beans, but I find the skin bitter and tough. What do you do about it? Or is it just the variety I grow?

Joseph Lofthouse wrote: Beans contain a poison which is deactivated by boiling. Slow cookers can sometimes have a hard time reaching the poison's deactivation temperature. So I recommend simmering in a pot on the stove. Once the beans are thoroughly cooked, then is a good time to make chili or stew in a crock pot.

So that's why I can't digest low temperature beans without stabby in my gut.

Thank you. And thank you for sharing your other ideas as well. If I had an apple left today, I would toss it at your post. I'll just have to make do with pie.

An extra long soak, like Deppe talks about in the Resilient Gardener, seems to reduce the stabby. So far only a fast boil makes it go away entirely. Long soak (36-48 hours) plus fast boil = very easy for me to digest. This long soak is more than just putting the beans in water and walking away. There are lots of changes of water and frequent stirring of the beans... Deppe explains it better.


I still think I'll try this boil first then slow cook the beans to see if it makes things easy to digest. I think maybe a 15 min boil, then slow cook overnight will be my first try.

Another question for you Joseph.

What are your thoughts on falafel? I've been wanting to make this for ages now, but haven't had a chance or recipe.

My understanding is that we soak the chickpeas, then grind up the beans, fry them... all without boiling them. Yet, I can eat these without stabby gut pain. Perhaps the extra hot temp of the oil neutralizes the toxins?



Anyone here make falafels? What's your favourite recipe? These are my favourite protein for a packed lunch.

Actually... you raise a really good question I'd like to direct to Joseph as well, Ranson.

@ Joseph: have you experimented with deep-frying beans (ideally in a healthy fat [grass-fed tallow for example])? If so, got any guidelines or recipes?

No help with questions on toxin or how to make the falafel, but I have a recipe for a very portable use for falafel.

Try sealing about a teaspoon of falafel into a wonton wrapper and then deep frying the whole wonton. It's filling enough to be a main course and each wonton is a appetizer sized snack. It also gives you a vegan option to bring to pot lucks. My mother sent us to school with this when other parents were sending cookies and cakes. There were never any left over.

I'm alternately sucking on a chickpea, and a common bean. The poison in the chickpea is hardly discernible to me. The common bean is quite noticeably poisonous. Just for giggles I selected a red-kidney bean out of the bucket, because they are reputed to be especially high in poison. Yup. Not something that I'd be eating raw except for the sake of science.

I think that hot oil would work wonders for deactivating any low level poison in the falafel.

I really like to eat chickpeas in the garden. They are like eating a shelling pea. Fiddly though, because there are only one or two seeds per pod.

One time, I thought that I would eat a tepary bean pod. The poison in the pod was very pronounced. A real spitter, and something to be regretted for the next hour. I'm chewing on a tepary bean now. It's tasting mildly poisonous to me. Much less than the kidney bean, but still enough to spit it out rather than swallow.

The closest I come to deep frying beans is 'refried beans'. I start by cleaning, soaking, and boiling the beans. I like adding a couple tablespoons of vinegar to the cooking water. It seems to really help with flavor. Draining them in a colander. Then dumping them into a frying pan with a great fat like coconut oil, or lard. And not being stingy with the fat. Then cooking them on high until they get crispy on the outside. Then adding enough of the cooking liquid back into them, while mashing, to get a paste like consistency.

My runner bean seeds are quite coarse. I think of that as part of their charm. I would feel deprived if I had to eat the same type of bean all the time. The way I grow beans, each bean in a pot of soup is it's own thing. So joyous to play with my food, and experience all the different textures, colors, tastes, and sizes.

Here's how I typically eat beans. In a soup with corn. The beans include peas, common beans, tepary beans, runner beans, favas, cowpeas, garbanzos, and soybeans.

Thank-you for starting this topic today.

I've had french lentils stored in a 5-cup jar for...well, we bought them at least 18 months ago, because they came with us from our previous location. We had never tried cooking them. The jar was still wrapped in tape from moving when I brought it out this morning.

So this morning after reading this post about cooking with dry beans, I decided I would finally try the lentils.
I just boiled them with some dry soup mix and water until they seemed tender. It took about 40 minutes.
I've nibbled on a few, and they seem fine. So they will be part of supper tonight, and now I have at last broken open the jar! I am feeling very adventurous.

Harvesting Dry Bush Beans:

My preferred method of harvesting dry bush beans is what I think of as the garbage can method...

After the beans plants have died, and dried down I take about a 30 gallon metal garbage can into the field with me. I pull up a plant, and hit it once or twice against the inside of the garbage can. The bean pods shatter, releasing the beans into the garbage can, and I toss the plant away. There is a slight bit of finesse involved in this method, because I want the beans to go into the garbage can, but not the dirt that is attached to the roots. I could avoid the dirt altogether by cutting the plant instead of pulling, but pulling is easier and faster. And that's important to me on bean picking day, because it's that time of year when I am busiest as a farmer, trying to get the fall harvests collected before snow/frost. As a plant breeder, I don't like varieties of beans that are hard to thresh. I don't like varieties of beans that split open in the field before I harvest them. I don't like varieties of beans that rot if they get a little bit of rain. If I notice any of those traits in beans that I'm harvesting, then I use those varieties as food. It's my goal to only save seeds from non-shattering, non-rotting plants that are easy to thresh.

It's important to me to avoid harvesting dirt along with the beans, because it is hard to separate dirt from beans by winnowing. I can remove small pieces of dirt from beans by using a colander or a screen. I can similarly remove large pieces of dirt with a screen. I end up hand sorting the beans to remove dirt that is about the same size as a bean. So anything I can do to avoid introducing dirt is a good thing. Sometimes, if the beans aren't quite dry enough to harvest, and I want to pick them because rain is expected, I'll cut the plants off just above ground level and pile them on a tarp to dry in the barn. Then after they are dry, I can release the beans from the pods by stomping on them, or hitting them with a stick or piece of pipe. I make sure to clean my shoes first, so that I'm not introducing pebbles into the beans.

I grow bush beans, because I can harvest whole plants at once. I avoid growing pole beans, because I don't like picking individual pods. I'm sure that an enterprising gardener could grow pole beans on twine, so that the twine could be cut off the posts, and the whole thing rolled up for threshing. I've been known to use a similar strategy with pole beans, by not installing poles, and letting them sprawl however they will, then cutting the roots off, and rolling up the patch to thresh on a tarp.

I often end up harvesting beans about 10 days after the plants are killed by fall frosts.

The beans that I harvest are not typically fully dry, so I spread them out on a flat surface to dry a bit more.


I winnow a lot of beans, so I built a seed winnowing contraption. It consists of a variable speed fan, and an inclined plane with hopper that directs seeds towards the fan in a consistent manner. Nice thing about using the contraption is that the separation can be done in a single pass. When I used to pour seeds from bucket to bucket, it took many passes.


The beans are caught by one or more bins. The following photos are of squash seed, but the same principle applies.


I can achieve a bit of separation between rocks and seeds.

My husband has trouble digesting beans sometimes, so we used to do the soak and rinse, soak and rinse thing before cooking - and then drain the cooking water too - which did work as far as digestibility goes. We've found that the flavour is much improved by NOT soaking the beans, though. Now we just cook them until veeery soft, generally keep the cooking broth, and he doesn't seem to have any problems. If you don't want the beans falling completely apart, add acid (like tomatoes) or salt partway through the cooking and that helps them keep shape. I grow our beans, so they're fresh and don't really need soaking to cut down cooking time anyway.

I do soak chickpeas because I'm still buying dry ass store bought ones due to limited garden space. If I'm draining the chickpeas after cooking anyway, I cook them in their soak water and keep the cooking liquid. There's enough protein and starch in it that it can be whipped like egg whites and, with help, doesn't taste like chickpeas anymore. It acts differently than egg whites in a lot of applications, though - so don't start madly swapping eggs for chickpea juice in all your recipes. You'll be disappointed.

I foraged a decent amount of feral rye this year so we're trying to use more of it in cooking. My husband discovered he really likes rye and chickpeas together in soup. Soak equal parts by volume whole rye and dried chickpeas overnight or for a day or for however long it takes you to get around to them. Rinse and drain and add them to a pot with new water. Add a piece of kombu, dried dill, ground or at least smashed up coriander seed, some chopped up pickled onions, salt and pepper; and simmer until everything's soft. He likes a light, mild broth for this soup, so some people might need to add more exciting stuff.

Here's another bean related question for you all.

"They" say that adding acid, salt or things like tomatoes to beans while they are cooking makes something bad happen. There seems to be a lot of difference in opinion, and lots of exceptions to the rules.

What are your personal thoughts and experiences with adding salt, acid, or tomatoes to cooking beans?

This article has a bunch of information about cooking beans - soaking/not soaking, salting/not salting. The author says not salting beans leads to less flavour and having to add more salt later to get the same degree of saltiness. I've found this to be the case as well.

Possibly my favourite bean, nez perce, works really well as baked beans or in savoury tomato sauce, so I always cook them in acid. The beans come out whole, soft, dense, sweet, and creamy. I cooked them once in plain water to put in a bean salad and they fell apart and were bland.

After a disastrous rice and tomato dish where the rice refused to cook, I was wary for quite a while of what I cooked beans (along with all starches) in. Now I don't worry about it and i've never had tough or uncooked beans from salt or acid. Still haven't risked it with rice, though. As far as cooking times go, I don't know what difference the additions might be having since I cook beans for way longer than many people would consider necessary anyway.

It's interesting that you have the experience of adding things to cooking rice making it toughen, but not beans. I have the exact opposite happen. When I cook rice I add most of the seasonings, any onions, mushrooms, nuts that I'm including and cook it together though I add extra water. Usually turns out great for me, but if I add anything but baking soda to my beans they tend to stay a little crunchy (in an unpleasant fashion). I'm still working on how much baking soda I need to add to not make bean paste.

Do you have any extreme PH issues with your water? PH is one of the theories I've seen for what decides the texture of the cooked beans. Here it's alkaline.

Casie Becker wrote:It's interesting that you have the experience of adding things to cooking rice making it toughen, but not beans. I have the exact opposite happen. When I cook rice I add most of the seasonings, any onions, mushrooms, nuts that I'm including and cook it together though I add extra water. Usually turns out great for me, but if I add anything but baking soda to my beans they tend to stay a little crunchy (in an unpleasant fashion). I'm still working on how much baking soda I need to add to not make bean paste.

Do you have any extreme PH issues with your water? PH is one of the theories I've seen for what decides the texture of the cooked beans. Here it's alkaline.

It was tomatoes specifically, an acid, and there was very little moisture other than tomatoes in the recipe. Seasonings and low-acid ingredients are not an issue.

I'm curious what you're adding to your beans that they stay crunchy and how long you're cooking them for. I've cooked beans in hard and soft water with the same results I describe in my previous post, so I'm skeptical moderate pH changes make much, if any, of a difference. It would be very easy to cook two pots of beans side by side in low and high pH water to compare the results and know for sure, though.

Jan White wrote:This article has a bunch of information about cooking beans - soaking/not soaking, salting/not salting. The author says not salting beans leads to less flavour and having to add more salt later to get the same degree of saltiness. I've found this to be the case as well.

That was a very fascinating article. Thank you for linking to it.

One of the things in that article that got my attention was why they claim pre-soaking beans prior to cooking makes little or no difference to how we digest them.

The article says, there is a kind of sugar stored in the bean, that it uses to fuel it as it grows from seed to plant. When we eat this sugar, we lack the enzymes to digest it. It isn't until the large intestines that it starts to break down... and when it does, it produces gasses including smelly ones. The claim is that these sugars do not leach out into the soaking water. Which makes sense when one thinks about it. They are seeds after all. What would the germ (growy plant thingy) have to 'eat' if they let all their 'food' dissolve into the soaking water?

This brought to mind two ideas. They are just ideas. Don't assume they are correct and start spreading them all over the internet as fact.

First, Sally Fallon in Nourishing Tradition recommends we add some live culture whey, sauerkraut or other fermented liquid to beans just prior to eating them. Something about it having bacteria that either aid in digestion, or produce/trigger us to produce enzymes that help break down the complex sugars in beans. Something like that, I don't have the book in front of me. Maybe this is why miso is so much easier to digest than say bean paste. Something in the live culture breaks down the sugars or gives our body the tool to break them down?

The second might explain why a Carol Deppe's long soak method makes the beans so much easier for me to digest than a simple overnight soak.

Deppe's soaking style takes about two days. We stir the beans every hour or so, especially at the beginning, so that every bean has some exposure to oxygen. It also involves changing the water several times. What's really interesting is that this method is the same method (and time) she uses to pre-germinate her bean seeds before planting them in the earth.

Putting this together with what that article said: Maybe this long soak has triggered the germination process enough to start transforming the sugars stored in the beans into a kind of sugar/starch/whatever the the germ (baby plant part) can consume. This transformation also makes the beans easier for us humans to digest. Maybe?

Barely sprouting dry beans prior to cooking? I'm going to have to experiment with that.

hey ... i had been making falafel a few times. i don t use exact recipes, but there must be some.

basically, you soak the chick peas 24 hours. then you cook HALF of it. that s important, only the raw beans will glue stuff together.

i used some blended/chopped garlic and onion (optional).

i used salt, a bit curry, peppers and an oriental seasoning (köfte spice for turkish meat burgers). some mediterranean herbs might fit well.

i used a bit of baking powder and starch. but you should test if they fall apart or not... it depends. you need to press the balls, so that they would not fall apart. especially when deep frying, they often fall apart. i think, more starch then will help.

turn it into a paste with a meat grinder. when using a blender, the peas will stick to the walls.

you need to test your mixture by testing 1 falafel. you can deep frie them (make balls a bit bigger than a walnut), frie them in a pan or in the oven. make them a bit flatter then. in the oven brush or spray them with vegetable oil.


it needs some experimenting. in the oven they wont fall part, even when the mixture is not sticky enough. but they might crumble while eating. but they ll taste good anyhow.


there is a chick pea flour in indian-shops. it could be used to glue them together. or for other recipeas ( that flour with eggs and spices will make kinda omelette).

I can make falafel with a meat grinder? This changes everything!

My blitzers on the fritz and makes this terrible smoking smell when I try to blitz soft stuff like hummus. It won't even make pesto anymore. I don't really want to replace it because that keeps me trapped in the consumer cycle. But if I can use a meat grinder, or better yet, a food chopper
, then I know what I'm making tomorrow.

I'm thinking of giving this recipe a go for my first falafel. It's a chickpea recipe with fava bean variations. I'm tempted to replace the parsley/cilantro with a leek from the garden.

Another falafel recipe I would love to try is the one from the book Fagioli : the bean cuisine of Italy. I got this out from the library ages ago, but life stuff happened and the result was running down to my friends shop and chowing down on his homemade falafel.


In other news, the spring has been remarkably warm. We've had March temperatures since last week. Usually with an el nino or whatever this winter is, we have a very mild winter and early spring. A few years back, I was harvesting new potatoes in Feb. It usually means our summers are a bit unpredictable, but we take the good with the bad. I decided to put the peas in the ground a month early. Chickpeas and soup peas are sprouting in the soil. If winter doesn't reassert itself, then we are in for a very good dry pea harvest. I kept most of the seed back for regular planting time. I'm curious to see if getting a jump on the season this year will make any difference to the harvest time or amount.

Just had the slow cooker beans for breakfast described near the top of this thread. I made them with '8mm white beans' from the store. The beans had a definite skin, but it wasn't bitter or chewy as normal. The inner bean was soft and creamy.

I soaked the beans about 30 hours. Put them in the slow cooker with a finely chopped leek, and some bacon chunks. after about 8 hours on high, I added salt and maple syrup. They tasted good last night, but I didn't really feel like beans, so I heated them up again today with a few drops of spicy cock sauce. AMAZING! No tummy ache. We'll have to see how the gut reacts.

The slow cooker I used runs hot, so it did manage to get to a decent boil after 4 hours. If I was using a normal slow cooker, I would definitely be boiling the beans first.


Perogies, sauerkraut and beans for breakfast. I feel like a proper farmer. Got to go outside and do some real work now.

One of my favorite meals these days is a curried-chickpea dish. I used to make it in the slow cooker but now that I have an electric pressure cooker, that does a better job.

It's real simple, but I never measure anything so this is at best an approximation. The recipe is very forgiving of variation:


2 lbs of dry chickpeas (garbonzo beans). No soaking needed.
A bunch (minimum two tablespoons, you can use lots more) of onion powder (the fine stuff -- better than fresh for this)
Half as much garlic powder (also better than fresh for this)
Two of the tiny cans of tomato paste
1-2 tablespoons of salt
Curry powder aka garam marsala (A lot, more than you would think, at least twice as much as you used onion powder, several Tbs minimum, I use the stuff they sell in quart cans at the Asian supermarket )
Water (to the 16-cup line in my electric pressure cooker; as much as would fit in my old slow cooker)

I cook on high pressure for 99 minutes (the longest my electric pressure cooker will permit). Result is sweet soft creamy chickpeas in a rich spicy "gravy". If you use fresh onions and garlic, diced and chopped normally, the "gravy" doesn't have as nice a texture, and the flavor is different; still fine, but not as good IMO.

Mmmmmmmm... Eating home made falafel. Soooooo yummy!

Surprised how easy it was too make.

R Ranson wrote:Mmmmmmmm... Eating home made falafel. Soooooo yummy!

Surprised how easy it was too make.

Did you follow the recipe you linked to or use the suggestion to cook half the chickpeas?

I "followed" the recipe about as much as I usually follow a recipe. I'm not great at doing as I'm told.



This is what I did. I copied it from My Blog, but first asked my permission to do so, which I gave.

1 cup of dry chickpeas
1 cup fava beans (lightly crushed and skins winnowed)

Soak at least 24 hours with several changes of water.

1 leek
1 small onion
3 cloves garlic
2 teaspoons salt
2 Tbs flour
1 tsp cayenne pepper
pinch cardamom

Toasted whole then ground
3 pepper corns
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander

Drain the beans, mash them up with all the other ingredients

form into falafel shapes (which happens to be the same shape as a large spoon) and deep fry medium heat

Wow, those look good!

Tyler Ludens wrote:Wow, those look good!

They were

Anyone here make hummus? Anyone make it without an electric tool? My blitzer and blenders are both on the fritz, and I really don't want to go out and buy new (or used) ones... but without them, no home made hummus.

While we're at it. What's your hummus recipe like? There are so many variations. My favourite goes like this:

Chickpeas
Garlic
Lemon/lime juice
salt
sesame/olive oil

Mix and blend, adjust ingredients to taste.

While we are at it. I'm seeking an awesome recipe for dried soup peas.

I saved a whole bunch of peas from my Japanese Climbing Snow Pea last year and I really want to give them a try... only no pea recipes.

These are my favourite pea plant so far. The tendrils and leaves are delicious and tender. The pods sweet and long harvest. The dry peas are also edible. And they help add nitrogen to the soil. And they help add biomass to the soil at the end of the season. AND they are beautiful.

Any good recipes for dry soup peas?

R Ranson wrote:Any good recipes for dry soup peas?

I cook dry soup peas just like beans. Normally added to soups, chili, salads, or stir-fry. Additionally I add about 5% dry peas to my dry bean mix. So whenever I cook dried beans, I am cooking peas at the same time.

I knew I could count on you for inspiration. Off to soak some beans and peas mixed together.
Don't know what I'm going to make with them yet. Failing everything else, it's maple bacon beans again.

pea soup is a big thing in germany. my mother often made it, i m not sure if she still does. i think, she made a huge batch and put many small portions into the freezer.

we use dried green beans. probably peeled. soak overnight. fry some fatty bacon with oil in a pot. add peas with water. slowcook. normally you would add preserved pig legs (salted and maybe lightly smoked, i dunno. they have lots of fatty skin around and soft meat around the bone.)
you would add some onions, leek, carrot, potatoes, celery (these huge lumps).

slowcook until ready. if your peas are too hard, it could help to use a stick blender or to pass it through a sieve. maybe you could cook the veggies in an extra pot and just stick-blend the peas, then add veggies with cooking water.

check it out and see if you like the consistency. it ll depend on you peas. so it s: try, taste, monkey with the mixture and slowcook UNTIL READY

it goes well with fatty, salty, smoked meats.

add salt and pepper when ready (the meat will brin in some saltiness, so be carefull).
some people like bay leaves in it

i am wondering ... store bought dried green peas can be sprouted. could you make fallafel with these? maybe add some starch to glue them together. dried chick peas can be sprouted, too, depending on quality.

as far as i remember, you should not eat raw chick peas, but raw green peas are ok. any info on that?

edit: i stir fried some grean pea sprouts. interesting. they turn put very crispy. could go well in some dishes

R Ranson wrote:Anyone here make hummus? Anyone make it without an electric tool? My blitzer and blenders are both on the fritz, and I really don't want to go out and buy new (or used) ones... but without them, no home made hummus.

While we're at it. What's your hummus recipe like? There are so many variations. My favourite goes like this:

Chickpeas
Garlic
Lemon/lime juice
salt
sesame/olive oil

Mix and blend, adjust ingredients to taste.

I've read you can make a very smooth, creamy hummus on the stovetop with chickpea flour. The recipe I saw said to add all your ingredients together, then slowly add water to make a paste. It's really hard to get chickpea flour smooth if you add too much water all at once. Once it's a smooth paste you can add more water and then cook it. I use chickpea flour a lot, but haven't tried the hummus so can't report on results.

If you don't mind a chunky hummus you could just use a masher.

I make a lot of what we call chickpea tuna - basically just the vegan classic of mashed chickpeas + everything you'd put in a tuna salad minus the tuna. Not hummus, but an easy, no electric tools required chickpea recipe.

Tobias Beras wrote: far as i remember, you should not eat raw chick peas, but raw green peas are ok. any info on that?

Pretty sure you're thinking of Lathyrus sativus, which is sometimes called chickpea. They're considered emergency food cause they have a neurotoxin in them that can build up and do nasty things to you if you eat them for too long. Supposed to be really tasty, though. Garbanzo beans/chickpeas are a totally different plant.

Chickpeas can be eaten raw, in the garden, while they are young. Apparently they are quite delicious, but I'm not fond of them. Some people may be sensitive to them.

I'm not keen on eating dry chickpeas raw. I find them too hard to digest if they haven't been cooked. Maybe that's why I don't like raw fresh chickpeas either.


Neat idea about using chickpea flour for humus. I was wondering just last night about how to make bean flour. I was also wondering how to use it without having the same digestive issue I have with raw or undercooked dry beans.

R Ranson wrote:Neat idea about using chickpea flour for humus. I was wondering just last night about how to make bean flour. I was also wondering how to use it without having the same digestive issue I have with raw or undercooked dry beans.

Chickpea flour is often roasted - not sure if that's the flour itself or the chickpeas. Might that make a difference for you?