bakingbeanspie
I'm making a recipe that involves using pie weights when pre-baking a pie crust, and suggests using dried beans as an alternative if you don't have purpose-made pie weights.
Can you eat the beans after using them for this purpose? Does it change how long you'd cook them or anything else about how you'd prepare them?
If not, can you re-use them in subsequent pies?
Yes. You can either use aluminum foil that has been lightly sprayed with some Pam or rubbed with butter OR a piece of parchment paper cut into a larger circle than the pie. It will create an overhang that you can use to pull out the weights or beans.
If you try to bake it with the beans on the surface it will cook directly into the dough and your shell will be ruined.
I still prick the bottom of the crust because steam and air will still be trapped underneath the pie weights. When you remove the weights to finish the baking of the crust, if it has not been pricked you could still end up with pockets and air bubbles as that part of the crust is still a bit raw.
If you have oven safe noodle bowls (ceramic, not plastic) then line them, as you describe with the foil, but do not remove them from the bowls. Bake your pie in the lined bowls, then remove the finished pies, with their aluminum "pan" intact. Or just make pasties...no pan required.
As you indicate you don't have oven safe bowls and it must be a pie, I decided to experiment, using the double foil idea. I have heavy duty foil. I used a double layer and lined a noodle bowl making sure that there was plenty of foil out past the edge. I then pressed another noodle bowl on top of the two sheets of foil to make sure all is acting as a unit. While the top bowl is still in place, crumple up the excess foil, making a rim. This is what will give you the strength you need. I would then take the top bowl out, and line the now stable foil pie tin with your pie pastry. Fill the pie and if there is a top crust, finish the pie. You can now take the pie out of the noodle bowl and bake it as usual, although I would certainly do it on a baking sheet.
The double foil is much stronger than you'd expect, but the stability comes from the rim you build with the excess foil hanging over the edge.
Here's the finished bowl with the two molding bowls.
Best Answer
Beans are already dried, but it's certainly possible that baking them dries then further, or cooks them without softening. It's worth testing, for which I'd use chickpeas - I buy them in bulk, and they soften quite easily (plus I cook them on their own too make hummus while my other beans cook in chilli etc). I'd rinse them and put them on to soak once they've cooled a little, rather than storing them.
For reuse as baking beans I'd be concerned about two things: safety, and scorched beans giving an off flavour. The latter is addressed by not reusing them if they start to brown, and for the former, it's important to keep them dry, as dry beans keep indefinitely. If the beans are in direct contact with the pastry during blind baking, I'd rinse them briefly (to get any flecks of pastry off then return them to the cooling oven to dry quickly).