Super Pressure Cooker Bean Chart – With Tips Recipe

• 1 Hr. to make
• Serves Some

Do you remember what beans really taste like? This is a long post about coking great beans, chilli, etc. from dried beans. If you just aren’t interested you may as well click on the next recipe now. However, if you’re tired of tasteless canned beans, read on. Read more I love beans and canned are seriously blah; so I did a bunch of research on the web. All of this came from there but I’ve tried several and they came out fantastic. Every pressure cooker is a bit different and I pre-soak the beans overnight and use the longer times, plus one minute, at high pressure and the natural cooling method, with my stovetop job, to get great beans. The time chart is at the end. Is Pre-soaking Necessary? When they're cooked the usual way on the stove top, the greatest drawback with dried beans is the fact that they need to be soaked before cooking, sometimes up to 12 hours. So unless you've planned ahead, dried beans aren't a spontaneous ingredient. There is a quick-soaking method where the beans and water are brought to a boil and then left to soak for an hour or so (as opposed to overnight). This helps to cut the cooking time down considerably, but we're still talking 3-4 hours before you have a pot of edible beans. This is where the pressure cooker shines: without pre-soaking, a pound of dried beans can be done in anywhere from 6 to 40 minutes, depending on the variety. Pretty great! Is there a catch? Well, a small one. Pre-soaked beans will (mostly) stay intact when they are pressure cooked, while un-soaked beans tend to split open. While the quick-soaking method helps somewhat to alleviate the splitting, if you want whole, tender beans then your best bet is to pre-soak. You can use the quick-soak and un-soaked beans for those times when the splitting isn't such a big deal, like when you're making hummus or in soups. Another advantage to pre-soaking beans is that most of the gas-causing sugars are leached out into the soaking water. So when you drain off the soaking water, you are also saying goodbye to this unpleasant side effect to eating beans! What About Salt? For many years, cooks believed that salting dried beans as they cook contributes to their toughness. These days, we know that soaking dried beans in salted water really helps to season them all the way through. So pre-soaking beans in a salted water and cooking them with salt is no longer verboten. I usually pre-soak my beans overnight to be cooked the next morning as 8-10 hours in usually enough soaking time. (You can also start them soaking just before you leave for work.) For one pound of beans, I dissolve 2 Tbs. of salt into 6 cups of water in a bowl, add the beans, cover and leave the beans on my counter. The next day, I drain them and then add them to the pot along with fresh water, more salt, and some aromatics. What About the Aromatics? I like to add a few basic aromatics to the water when cooking beans. A little onion, a clove or two of garlic, and a bay leaf are my usual add-ins. They add a subtle seasoning to the beans and boost up the flavor of the cooking liquid. You can add any aromatics to suit your palate or recipe, but just remember to keep it subtle: pressure cooking will really emphasize the flavours’, so keep strong flavoured additions to a minimum. Keep the aromatics whole as the flavor of finely chopped ingredients will just get lost in the pressure cooking process. Avoid fresh herbs like parsley or basil as their flavor will not stand up well either. And speaking of the broth: it has lots of flavor and nutrients so don't throw it away! If you're not using it for your recipe, freeze it to add to soups later on. Adding Oil It's a good idea to add 1 Tbs. of neutral oil to the pot. Beans are notorious for producing foam which can clog the pressure valve, and the oil will help to keep that down. High or Low? Most pressure cookers have a high and a low pressure setting. The high setting is usually 15 psi and the low is at 5 psi. In general, beans are done on the high setting. The Release Method There are two ways to depressurize your pot of beans once the cooking time is done. You can just let it sit and cool down, usually called the slow or natural release. Or you can use the quick release method which means you depressurize manually, usually by pressing a valve on the cooker (consult your manual) or by running cold water over the cover for several minutes. Most pressure cooker experts agree: letting the beans depressurize naturally is the way to go if you want whole, un-split beans. See less

• beans
• water
• spices
• pressure cooker
• nothing specific