How to Cook Beans

Soak 12 hours or overnight with about triple the amount of water to cover beans as they expand. Prepare less than you think you want because they bulk up.

1. Boil with extra water, at least double the amount of beans.
2. Half-lid the pot and turn up heat but keep on your toes to catch the boiling.
3. After about 15 minutes, pour out or skim off the froth, the GAS you don’t want to be blowing out.

4. Replenish water with about double the amt of beans.
5. Recover boil, add a small strip of kombu to balance the proteins and oils in the legumes and make them more digestible. Simmer another hour or until beans are soft.
6, Add acidic foods like vinegar, lemon, or tomato and the sea salt the last 10 min or the beans won’t soften.
7. Spices like cumin, coriander, dill, turmeric, dried ginger go well with beans and make them tasty.

With beans, you’ll want to back off before you feel full. The happy satiety will come a bit after your last bite and keep you a good long while.

Children under 18 months have difficulty digesting most legumes.

Sweet & Spicy Red Bean Stew

I was craving sweet kidney beans. Cozied up this blustery day, Tennyson and I licked our lunch bowls clean. Shaped like their beneficiaries, these beans are good for — you guessed it — the kidneys. The designs of God! Among the many reasons we want to be kind to our kidneys is their upkeep of our reproductive system. This hearty dish welcomes a variety of veggies. Fennel or zucchini would’ve been great.

Soaked beans, 1/2-3/4 cup
Crimini mushroom
Garlic
White onion, 4 ringed slices
Chopped celery, 2 stalks
Olives optional or touch of oil
Small strip of Kombu

Cinnamon 1/2 tsp
Cumin up to 1 tsp
Sorghum syrup or sweetener of choice, 2 T or to taste
Red pepper paste 1/4 teaspoon optional
Sea Salt to taste, up to 1 tsp

Serves 2

Once you’ve added the kombu and/or are resimmering (per How To Cook Beans post), add the garlic, onion, and spices to get the flavor going. Best to add veggies toward the end so they don’t overcook and retain the enzymes and vitamins, but I felt like infusing the celery minerals into the soup this time and so tossed in the celery early. After about an hour, add the other vegetables, salt, pepper paste, and syrup. I procured pure red pepper paste in glass without the trappings of msg and sugar from H Mart, a Korean market. Stir and cook another few minutes. Add olives before serving. Their oil, or a quality oil, combines well with beans.

Variation

2 heaping T rice syrup
A little under 1 T tomato paste
Coriander spice makes everything delish

Rice syrup is a mild sweetener so you’ll need a little more. Sorghum is a grain, an important crop of Africa and South Asia. The syrup or molasses is sold at health food markets along with the rice syrup. Celery is one of my superfood secrets for delicious soup and broth. Some folks aren’t crazy about it raw, but the taste mellows when cooked while the sodium it gives up into the juices is the wonderful kind the body begs. And few veggies beat the silicon content that helps you absorb calcium and strengthens your bones.