Here’s Your Roadmap to Cooking Beans

First tip: Don’t buy canned ones

Pancotto photo by Johnny Fogg

The first step in cooking beans is buying the right ones. Most dried beans you’d find at the grocery store or in the bulk section of high-dollar organic markets aren’t very good since they don’t see enough turnover to be remotely fresh.

It would be easy to think, who cares? The beans are dry and they’re made for storage; it’s not like they are going to go bad. While that may be true, older beans don’t cook as well as new ones.

When it comes to beans, consumers generally have no idea where they’re from and how old they are. Those beans may come from a number of different farms in a number of different conditions even from different harvests where beans from two or more years ago are mixed in with last year’s crop to bulk it out.

I would be willing to bet that anyone who has bought dried beans could tell stories about cooking a pot of beans and ending up with a total mess where some of the beans are completely blown away and turn into mush, while others are still starchy and hard. Many people avoid dried beans for this reason and instead choose canned beans — don’t reach for the cans. If this has happened to you, know that it was probably not your fault. You just bought some crappy dried beans.

Don’t be discouraged. Find good dried beans, and it will get better from there. Look for suppliers who will guarantee they are selling new crop beans, who approach beans with the care and reverence they deserve.

Rancho Gordo has excellent beans; so does Zursun, a company out of Idaho. At farmers markets, you’re likely to find farmers who sell a variety of beans, too: Ask them about their beans, and if they can talk about when they’re grown and how they’re stored, there’s a good chance you’re getting a quality product. Of course, they’re likely to cost a lot more than beans in the grocery store — and they’re worth it.

A cheaper alternative would be to buy beans from busy international markets that cater to bean-loving populations, where there’s a better chance that the store is turning over its inventory.

Once you’ve purchased beans, the next question is whether to soak them. If they’re new crop and have been stored properly, there’s no need to soak the beans, though I almost always do since it shortens the cooking time a little.

Before cooking beans, pick through or at least scan them to make sure there is no gravel, dirt, or foreign material. Give them a rinse, then soak them overnight if you’ve decided to, in fresh cold water. Or place them directly in the pot you’re planning to cook them in and get down to business.

A word on the pot: I like to cook beans in clay. Glazed or unglazed, terra cotta is the perfect vessel for cooking beans. People have been cooking beans in clay since there were clay pots and beans. If you don’t have clay pots, use the heaviest-lidded pot you have. Enameled cast iron is a good substitute.

If your beans were soaked the night before, drain them and give them a rinse. Put them in the chosen pot and cover them with fresh water. You don’t need as much as you might think: enough to cover the beans by an inch or so will suffice. Too much water and the flavor of the beans will be diluted.

Add some aromatics at this point, if you’d like: a clove or two of garlic or an onion, some celery, carrot, parsley, a bay leaf, maybe a few whole peppercorns, depending on what you’ll be doing with the beans. I most often cook beans with no aromatics because I like the taste of beans, but also because it gives me more latitude in terms of where and how I use the cooked beans.

There is some argument about whether salting beans early in the process changes the way they cook. If the beans are top notch, I don’t think it matters that much. That said, I don’t salt until the end of cooking.

Place a lid on the pot and place on a burner over low heat. For a clay pot, use a heat diffuser — or use one regardless. The idea is that you want very even, slow cooking for the beans. As they come up to a simmer, skim any foam or froth that might come to the surface and replace the lid. Cook. Slowly. Nice and easy.

Check the beans every now and again. If the beans swell and start to look a little dry, top up the level of liquid with some boiling water. When the beans are soft — to your liking, generally, though I’d specify they’d have no resistance when you bite into them, but still hold their shape with skin intact. Then salt to taste.

Store cooked beans in the refrigerator in the cooking liquid: Don’t throw it away. It is useful when you want to add liquid to a bean dish and provides better flavor and texture than just using water.

If you’d rather, you can cook beans in the oven by layering them in a baking dish or a hotel pan. In this case, add beans to the pan, pour in fresh water covering the beans by about an inch, cover the pan tightly with foil and set in a 200 F oven and cook until done, checking periodically. (Any range of lowish temperatures will actually work; I just like the texture of very slowly cooked beans the best.) Follow the same salting, cooling, and storage suggestions above.

A note on canned beans: Don’t. Really. You don’t need to. They taste like cans. I understand everyone is very busy and believes canned beans are a wonderful timesaver. They aren’t usually very good though, and they often end up mushy. If you really must use canned beans, at least seek out the ones in glass jars.