My bean cooking method is to soak overnight, then cook in a crockpot on low all day. By dinner time the beans are ready. I have only ever done this with a single type of bean at a time. However, I would like to make chili and I have two types of beans (white beans and red kidneys) and am wondering if this method would work if I mix the two types of beans together. Would this be generalizable to other types of beans cooking together, or more than two types of beans at a time?
Cook two types of dried beans simultaneously
beanstiming
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NO--I cannot emphasize this enough--you CANNOT use nylon rope (or any other random rope you have laying around, unless you can be guaranteed that it is 100% cotton or hemp)! It will melt all over your food. Cooking twine is generally, if memory serves, pure cotton and thus safe (though perhaps not tasty) to eat.
Tying your beans in bundles would be counterproductive; only the outer beans would cook. Unless you did some sort of weaving thing like a bamboo mat, at which point I would have to question whether the extra work actually saved you any time.
The mistake that most people make when grilling long skinny things is, as you say, to roll them. Or to flip them as though they were bigger objects. The trick is to turn them from their ends, so it's just a matter of grabbing the end--straight on, parallel to the bean--with your tongs, twist your wrist, move on to the next one.
According to this extensive bean cooking guide from University of Alaska Fairbanks, the secret is to simmer the beans gently. Unfortunately, they have little more to say on the matter.
Kenji Lopez-Alt, in his column on Food Myths at Serious Eats says (emphasis added):
Most of us have been told at some point in our culinary careers that salting beans will cause them to toughen. It's incredible that this little bit of culinary mis-wisdom still lingers, for it couldn't be further from the truth. A simple side-by-side test can prove to you conclusively that salting beans (both the water used to soak them in and the water used to cook them) actually tenderizes the skins.
It's got to do with magnesium and calcium, two ions found in the bean skins that help keep the structure of the beans' skin intact. When you soak the beans in salt water, sodium ions end up replacing some of the magnesium and calcium, effectively softening the skins. Your beans come out creamier, better seasoned, and have a much smaller likelihood of exploding while cooking.
He provides this image of the contrast:
I believe the take away from this is:
- Pre-soak your beans overnight, as your grandmother did using salted water
- Cook them at bare simmer, stirring them minimally, to prevent physical damage to the skins.
The second can easily be achieved by placing the bean pot in a moderate (350 F, 180 C) oven rather than doing it stove top.
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Best Answer
Most beans can be soaked and cooked together with two exceptions.
The beans should obviously have similar cooking times. For example I wouldn't cook chickpeas with other, harder beans because the chickpeas would be mush. Most varieties do have similar cooking times so this isn't often a problem.
Second, black beans shouldn't be soaked with any other beans because they will stain the other beans a very unappealing gray color. Admittedly this is cosmetic but I soak my black beans separately