A Better Way to Cook Dried Beans (no soak!)

If you make beans from scratch, then you know that they are so much more flavorful and delicious than ones from a can. If you make beans from scratch, then you also know that it can be quite a time consuming process.  Although there is not a lot of hands on time when you soak then boil your beans, it takes a little forethought, in otherwords you can’t just whip them up a couple of hours ahead of time without a pressure cooker. Or can you?

Recently I discovered a way to make beans in under two hours from scratch which results in nice creamy beans that aren’t slpit or mushy.  Simply bake the beans in an  earthware pot,  a dutch oven, or an oven safe pot (think Pyrex). Whichever you use make sure it has a tight fitting lid.

Here is how to do it:

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees.

Rinse and sort 1 lb of beans. 1 lb of dried beans is equal to 5 cups (about 3 cans) of cooked beans.

Place the beans in your container.

Pour cool water over the beans to cover them plus an inch more.

Add a teaspoon of salt or none if you prefer.

Put on the lid and bake them for 75 minutes.

Check them and if they need to cook longer add a little more water and put back in the oven at 15 minute increments.  Should definitly be ready at 2 hours.

Use the beans just like you would ones made on the stove or in a pressure cooker.  Beans made this way are supposed to be excellent for refried beans.

Other ideas to add to the pot include salty ham or bacon, herbs, chilies, or stock.

To find locally grown ingredients for your bean pot, check out Pick-A-Pepper.com!
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