When I was at my first year at the community garden, one of the good pieces of advice I got was to plant what your family likes to eat. Too bad you can’t grow pizza! Any hoo, I thought; beans. I used beans, pinto mostly, every week and knew my kids liked them. I also learned that growing beans put nitrogen into the soil, enriching the soil so to speak. Since this was a grassy field just the month before, I thought enrichment certainly couldn’t hurt. So I planted my beans, which took up more than half of my 20′ x 5′ garden bed, and waited. They bloomed, they produced pods. Eventually the pods dried and I harvested, so excited to break the pods open and cook beans for my family! My kids helped me shell the pinto beans and we ended up with a SMALL bowl of beans. By small I mean one of my teenage sons could eat the amount harvested in one sitting and still be hungry!
It was then that I remembered the wise words of one of my fellow gardeners. When he saw what I was planting he remarked
“Pinto Beans, good choice, but I have found that you have to have a lot of acreage to really get a good yield.’ In gardener speak that is translated as; “Unless you are going to plant the back north-forty acres with this crop, don’t bother.”
Now I hear advice, I do, but I am the kind of person that often has to experience it for myself. My parents probably looked at each other when I was growing up and said one to the other. “Did you warn her that it might not work out so well?” Oh, I forgot, she is going to have to experience it for herself, isn’t she?” In response the other sighed and said, “I am afraid so.” I feel your pain Mom because I have one of those kids myself now!
Now, you and I, both know that dried beans are pretty inexpensive at the grocery store, especially when bought in bulk. So there I was staring at my wee bowl of beans thinking I will not EVER waste garden space on these again. To be clear, I am talking about dried pinto beans, green beans I will do. I will even plant a special bean, that I can’t get anywhere else, like cream peas, which are a small white bean unrivaled in creamy goodness. But pintos, no.
So I buy my dried pinto beans in bulk at the store and I make them fart-less by doing this:
- 1-2 lbs of pinto or navy beans
- A few pieces of bacon,
- 1 onion
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1 bay leaf
- Soak beans over night in a big bowl filled with water.
- Rinse beans, put in large pot just covered with water.
- Bring to a roiling boil and boil for 10 minutes without lid on pot.
- You will see lots of foam on top. This is the gas that would have been in your gut.
- Rinse beans in colander, put back in pot covering with fresh water.
- Add onion, garlic, bacon and bay leaf. Cook on low all day, 6-8 hours.
- Add salt to taste.(adding salt earlier makes the shell of the bean hard)
- Now you are ready to smash some beans for tostadas or add to any dish you want with no fear of stomach pains or smelly gases.
- The broth/liquid I cooked the beans in makes a great base for vegetable soup! After it is cooled I put it in quart jars in fridge until I am ready to cook soup.(store for a week at most)
I am wondering if after preparing the beans following your recipe, they can be frozen in portions? I know they will not be used up before they spoil otherwise. If possible, could you email the response?
Great advice!, I’m going to try it and reply to you in the near future.
After 8 hours on low in my crockpot, they are not done yet. Can I turn to temp to high to finish them off?