I've tried this a couple of times, and the beans keep coming out too hard, even with extra soaking and after extra cooking. Possibly the beans I'm getting are too old (WF bulk)?
Maybe because our crock pot is generally on for about 10-11 hours and not the 8 that recipes call for?
2: I'm guessing it ended up warm and flat.
Somewhat to my surprise, the dry beans definitely taste much better and I am sorry if I ever thought anyone was being hyper-foodist about soaking dry beans instead of opening a can,
One of us! One of us!
What does baking soda do to beans aside from making them white?
6: softens them
softens em up real good
What if you get confused and use baking powder instead?
Enough to kill somebody?
Maybe somebody really really tiny. Maybe Ant-Man!
As a non-crockpotist, or -crockpottist, I'm out of the loop: you just add dried beans and water/stock and a bunch of stuff, and you never change the water? The crockpot has settings, for like the soaking cycle, then the cooking cycle? You soak the veggies with the dried beans during the soaking cycle? You just simmer the whole shebang from dried bean to done?
It is very satisfying to cook beans for hours and hours on a cold day.
Is this the thread for people who've been farted on?
15: I soak (big beans) for 6-8 hours, then put them on a low simmer for about an hour with veg, then take out the veg and add salt for another hour of medium boil or until they're done. Some people change the water between soaking and simmering.
Has anyone ever tried mixing some honey in with those beans?
Those particular beans? Probably not.
22: What do you mean by "those particular beans"?
If you mean that each object which happens to be a bean has a separate identity, then several mutually exclusive sets of beans have already been described.
I've heard of an apparatus constructed to attract and catch bears. It involved levers, figures, the usual chicanery, and honey of course. Some of it was old honey and some of it was new honey. Some of it was from well guarded hives, and others were from hives that had been despoiled. Some of the builders had deserved grievances and some did not. The important thing is there was a trap, the bait for which was honey. There was a bear. And there was beans.
Would anyone like to hear what happened?
"Others"? Honey isn't count-quantified.
At first it was simple. The bear came to the trap and licked the honey. He liked it. Some other critters came up behind the bear who also desired honey. But this trap wasn't for them! The architects weren't sure what to do, so the critters were incorporated among the levers and pulleys. It looked like that bear was going to be trapped.
But this was no ordinary bear. It was an easily bored bear, and it was getting bored of licking honey. Fortuitously some crack-laced honey was nearby. The bear'd had some of that once, but it had messed him up so badly he'd forgotten. Anyway, the bear liked crack honey.
Crack honey attracts not only bear, but many other types of woodland critters. They couldn't all be incorporated in the trap. Those critters had their own foodstuffs, but they ran to the crack honey trap regardless. And those foodstuffs chased them! This is when things get weird.
The bear had beans, and those beans weren't sure what to make of the honey situation. The gustatory chapter has been cut. The tummy was rumbly.
We all know the rest of the story. The critters are free now, they're just covered in shit.
And the bear was able to clear out some intestinal issues. It was a win-win.
Apparently, you did have a reason for avoiding third person narration.
re: slow-cooked beans
I presume not kidney beans? Or related members of the bean family?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phytohaemagglutinin
1: If your beans never get soft, I think you're right: it's not how you're cooking them, it's that they're stale. Shop someplace else.
33: I find it really hard to believe that crockpot cooked kidney beans are actually a hazard.
15: I throw dried beans, onions, garlic, some herbs and spices together with water into my crockpot. The only settings are low and high. Usually, I just leave it on low. I do this in the morning before I head to work or sometimes even the night before and just leave them be until I am ready to eat. I'm sure all this stuff about soaking and rinsing and all that makes some sort of noticeable difference, but dumping stuff in the pot and walking away produces a product sufficiently happy-making for me.
(Sometimes I do that with soup or stew or chilling, too.)
Aren't kidney beans usually delivered already cooked in a can?
"Outbreaks of poisoning have been associated with cooking kidney beans in slow cookers."
35
I find it really hard to believe that crockpot cooked kidney beans are actually a hazard.
Don't trust the FDA ?
Fortunately, eating meat or fish never caused anybody problems.
Nooooo! Lectins! And halford has abandoned us!
(Oh, gosh, though. So fear of lectins is like the whole "tomatoes are nightshade!" thing?)
You can't eat tomatoes raw. Or at least, I don't except when somebody has mixed them into something that tastes decent.
The love apples aren't poisonous, Moby. It's ok.
That's why I leave food preparation to the experts!
41: It's hardtack and coffee for me, then.
It has been shown that heating to 80°C may potentiate the toxicity five-fold, so that these beans are more toxic than if eaten raw.
Canned beans for me, then. I was almost on board with trying crockpot beans until I read that.
Canned beans might be safer to eat, but they are far more dangerous for juggling.
47: Did that have something to do with 45, or are you just going to call me a racist every time I comment now.?
48: It's just kidney beans! Although how many countless people have made chili in a crockpot without incident?
53: Using dry kidney beans? Maybe as many as several hundred foodies?
52: It's just become a time-honored tradition, although I'm sure I could make something up about 45.
Maybe:
"leave food preparation to the experts" = "make the brown people do it for me"?
54: What?? You realize those 59 cent bags of beans at the grocery store are like purchased by people and stuff?
56: That's what I thought. "Sexist" might have been less of a stretch.
58: Maybe it's because I've never looked, but I've never seen kidney beans dried in my store.
58: Probably most of those people - whether our of knowledge or habit - are cooking the beans correctly.
I buy dry beans, and I don't even own a crockpot.
58: Sure. people buy them and put them in glass jars, and it makes a pretty display in the kitchen. They mostly know better than to try to cook with them though.
We buy dried beans, but only the little green or red ones.
Yeah, oudemia, didn't you know that nobody else actually cooks? We talk as if we did, but it's really all just cleverly repackaged take-out and prepared foods.
65: I jest, of course, but you all do realize that in so far as you do cook from scratch, you are members of a small food elite.
66: I believe elite is a poor choice of word in that context. Maybe "cadre", and not all that small.
Crock pots aren't *stand mixers* for goodness sake. (Although they haven't [yet?] returned to their avocado-and-goldenrod heights of the 1970s.)
66: Actually, no. There's still a huge cost incentive to cook from scratch. (Along the same lines, the most frequent consumers of fast food are middle-income, not low-income.)
Nothing better than a good "People don't really cook like that except food obsessives with peasant nostalgia, you elitist" / "Except the actual peasants, you elitist racist" argument.
67; Did I mention that you are also a linguistic elite, in so far as you worry about word choice?
God, I'm an idiot.
Crock pots aren't *stand mixers* for goodness sake.
In my house they are similar in that they both are rarely used and mostly sit in the basement.
I don't even own a crock pot.*
*I cook my beans in a special middle eastern clay pot.**
**I only wish I were kidding.
Lots of people cook with dried beans. I usually soak them the night before.
We cook a lot, I think, by contemporary UMC standards. It definitely saves money and it's better for your health unless you have really awesome takeout options (nowhere I've lived recently.)
I don't even own a special middle eastern clay pot.
Incidentally, I found the link in 69 with a question-phrased search.
76: Poor Moby! Since oudemia is so embarrassed about it, maybe she'll send hers to you.
If I put my crockpot on high, the liquid in it eventually boils. So long as I do that I'm going to consider myself safe from bean poison.
If I put my crockpot on high, the liquid in it eventually boils. So long as I do that I'm going to consider myself safe from bean poison.
Also, the external vent on my range isn't installed properly so it doesn't draw enough air to make a proper draft.
If your middle eastern clay pot is ordinary, so are you.
I heard someone on some NPR call in show babbling about the freshness of her beans. I thought, "Must be one of those Rancho Gordo cultists," and sure enough it was.
I like refried beans, but maybe those aren't very fresh.
||
NMM to Jill Kelley's inviolability.
|>
She never actually had inviolability, did she? She just thought she did.
81: I initially misread "range" as "rage" but still wasn't surprised by the content of the message.
I thought, "Must be one of those Rancho Gordo cultists," and sure enough it was.
Man, it really is something though. It's startling how fast those can cook sometimes.
88: Apparently she had *something* that she doesn't have anymore.
91: yeah she lost her honorary consul status, which had some privileges attached. Just not personal inviolability.
I was going to try them since pre-soaking requires more planning ability than I have, but I prefer not to be startled by my food.
I don't avoid third-person narration, but I do ridicule the conclusory omniscient kind.
re: 35
I think that poisoning from undercooked kidney beans isn't that uncommon, actually. Of course some crockpots, as per Blume above, do heat to boiling point. If it was a concern, you could just boil them for 10-15 minutes in a pan and then transfer to the slow cooker.
Strike "babbling" from 85, for "carrying on". It makes it sound like I was trying to evoke a hysterical woman image, when all I wanted to do was make fun of beanies.
It's startling how fast those can cook sometimes.
Yeah, sometimes, he said with detectable quantities of bitterness.
It's important to note when bitterness is detectable. If you just wrote "bitterly," how would anyone know? Likewise, it is imperative to denote that bitterness comes in quantities; otherwise one might think that bitterness was an all-or-none proposition.
Also, italics should be used whenever possible. If the italics denote a specific manner of speech -- bitter speech, par example -- then you'd better tell the reader that as well by using that very word later on. Otherwise the reader might have to think.
88: Apparently she had *something* that she doesn't have anymore.
Sanity. Dignity. I mean, I could go on.
100: I try my very best each day for you.
Let me be (really?!) the first to recommend a pressure cooker. It is a pity that it doesn't let you walk in the door to a hot dinner.
There's an electric combined pressure cooker-crockpot that might, though.
There's an electric combined pressure cooker-crockpot that might, though
Oh man. Want. This is not going to help refute charges that I'm a kitchen gadget hoarder.
Wait, the "freshness" of dried beans matters? Why? They're dried.
Our rancho gordo beans have all been sitting in the basement for several years. We eat them slowly.
I got a lot of problems with you people.
Hey guys, if we reverse the score, we're really winning! We're winning!
109.1 is great, but I dunno, 109.2 has a lot going for it as well.
I go through RG beans too fast. I ran out a few weeks ago for the second time in a few months.
My understanding is that aging does still take place, though over a period of months. And it probably depends on how it's stored.
If you store them under a pyramid, they keep longer.
Wait, the "freshness" of dried beans matters? Why? They're dried.
It's a spectrum. Beans can become so dry, due to time and/or storage conditions, that they'll never get tender despite prolonged boiling.
I've actually got kidney beans (and black beans) in the crockpot on low right this very minute, and guests coming over tonight for dinner. Poison for everyone!
So dump them into a pot on the stove and boil properly for ten minutes before dinner. Problem solved.
I just placed a big order. Thanks for reminding me, guys.
116: How is that solving the problem? Her guests will still be alive.
But then I have to dirty an extra pot and take an extra ten minutes.
It takes way more than ten minutes to boil guests.
I just like it when their skin gets nice and bursting.
She only has to boil the guests long enough so they're not toxic
123: Depending on the guests, that could take awhile.
Good news! The crockpot is simmering! Rest easy, everybody.
Hey, good to know about Phytohaemagglutinin poisoning from improperly cooked red kidney beans. The few times I've made them from scratch, they've taken absolutely forever in both the soaking and cooking stages, to the point where they're the only beans I use from a can instead. Good advice to boil briskly before preparing dried ones.
It doesn't sound from the link in 36 as though other beans are much of a concern.
I ordered chili for dinner tonight at a diner, and it had whole red kidney beans in it. I was kind of nervous but I haven't gotten sick yet. Probably they were from a can anyway.
And then I found $11.
Regarding beans, tonight for dinner I head channa masala, and I kept plopping in hummus and then scooping it out with tortilla chips. It was delicious.
1333.2: Commenting in base 4 is the new black.
129: I would have said five, but I actually did find that I owed eleven dollars fewer than I expected to, and didn't want to lie by omission.
131: It's OK, I like that about you.
130: When you're among friends, it's a Sin of Bromission: a sin that's immediately forgiven.
128: You are creative both in your combinations of food and in your spelling of "had"!
129: You are clever!
133: Perhaps, but it can be difficult to tell the difference between a Sin of Bromission and the similar but weightier Sin of Iodission, which can only be expunged by the sacrifice of a heifer.