Find dried Great Northern Beans

According to this video on Youtube, which is one of the few references I could find:

They are essentially fully cooked beans that have then been dehydrated for long term storage. Therefore, they will "cook" again quickly as they are already cooked, and are essentially just being rehydrated.

If you listen to the video (it is mostly narration, and a few still pictures, and are very, very, very patient in listening), the narrator will describe how she creates them which comes down to:

1. Pre-soak the beans
2. Pressure cook them
3. Dehydrate them

Note that the first two steps are probably not that critical—you could cook the beans by whichever method you prefer.

Since it's hard to know the age of your beans, it's best to cook them before you start adding sauce ingredients. My approach is:

• soak them about 20 hours. Depending on how much water they soak up you may add more halfway through - if you set them soaking in the early evening, check them in the morning
• drain, rinse, and then boil for about two hours, checking to see if they are soft. If they're not soft, don't move on, keep them boiling (a low boil, but more than a simmer)
• once they're soft, drain them, add the sauce and whatever else (onions, bits of ham) and put them in the oven. I typically give them an hour in there but at this point it's about reducing the sauce, getting the flavours to mingle and soak in, that sort of thing.

My beans come from the local farmer who supplies all my fresh vegetables, but I don't always use them all right away. This week I cooked some cranberry beans from the late summer of 2013. They were creamy and soft using this technique.