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Hi, I'm Judith Kingsbury from Savvy Vegetarian dot com
Today I'm going to show you basic bean cooking
with kidney beans and black eyed peas.
I'm going to cook the kidney beans in the pressure cooker and the black eyed peas on the stove.
Let's start with kidney beans. Kidney beans are very hard and they take long soaking,
12 - 24 hours, and it depends on the age of the bean
how long they have to be cooked.
The beans have to be doubled in size and completely wrinkle free.
When you first start soaking them,
they get kind of wrinkly,
then as you go on soaking them,
they get less and less wrinkly until finally there are no more wrinkles and they are double in size.
Sometimes that takes 24 hours and you need to change the water several times like I did with these.
At this point you can cook beans in the pressure cooker,
or on the stove,
or in a slow cooker. If you're going to do kidney beans in a slow cooker,
you have to bring them to a boil and boil them for about 10 minutes.
Some people say 15 minutes, some people say 20 minutes, but
I find that 10 minutes is enough, and the reason for that is
that kidney beans have a toxin called
phytohennagglutenin (phyto-hennag-glutin-in).
In kidney beans that toxin is very high and it can make you quite sick,
so how you get rid of it is
first the long soaking
and second, boiling for 10 or 15 minutes.
Just for slow cooking, you have to bring them to a boil
and boil them for 15 minutes before you put them in the slow cooker.
It's a good idea to pre-heat the slow cooker on high,
then add the hot beans and cook them on high.
Now different people say different lengths of time.
Robin Robertson in Fresh from the Vegan Slowcooker
says to cook them on high for 3 hours,
boiling them for 15 minutes before slow cooking.
Well one thing is with kidney beans, or any other beans,
once you bring them to a boil, and you put them in the hot slow cooker and put the lid on,
they will stay at boiling point
for some time. So that's why I say 10 minutes
is good enough.
Lots of people do cook kidney beans in the slow cooker
without bringing them to a boil first and they haven't gotten sick yet,
but what we're doing is playing safety first
I'm giving you the safest way to cook
kidney beans to get rid of the
phyto-hennag-gluten-in -
that toxin that's in kidney beans.
That toxin is also in black beans but not nearly as much.
It's also in white kidney beans,
but again, about half as much as kidney beans.
In other beans there might be trace amounts, but it's not really something to worry about. But with kidney beans it's a big deal
Lorna Sass's Complete Vegetarian Kitchen
talks about pressure cooking beans,
and for kidney beans she gives a time of
10 -12 minutes, after being soaked,
and unsoaked, 20 - 25 minutes.
Well, I don't recommend cooking kidney beans without soaking.
Really, it just doesn't work.
Stove top cooking for kidney beans takes
1.5 - 2 hours, and my experience has been
that it takes at least that long.
Even after soaking them for 24 hours, you could end up cooking them
for up to three hours, so don't have in your head that
after two hours
your beans should be done and they are not, so you freak out and think there is something wrong with the beans.
No! They just need to cook longer.
So now I'm gong to transfer these kidney beans
into the pressure cooker.
I've already sorted through these and taken out anything that doesn't belong like broken or discolored beans,
or bug-bit beans, so
these are good to go.
Then I'm going to add water to just cover the beans, bring them to a boil, skim the foam, then put the lid on and lock it down.
The lock button is up,
and the pressure set for high, waiting for the
yellow pressure indicator button to pop up.
The pressures up,
turning the burner down to simmer.
Set the timer.
Okay the timer is going off,
turn off the burner,
and let the pressure come down naturally. When this little yellow button
has gone down, then I can open the lid. Now the pressure's come down on my
kidney beans. They cooked a total of 17-minutes,
maybe five minutes longer than they normally would.
The reason for that is that I added salt to the beans.
The purpose of the salt is to keep them intact,
instead of
splitting and blowing out when cooking.
See - they are all intact. Let's see if they're tender.
Mmm, good!
I'm going to leave these on the stove to cool off and then I'll freeze them in small containers,
to use when I need them for chile or soup or salad,
or anything I like. Here's my black eyed peas all soaked,
and ready to go on the stove and cook.
Now when I tried these the other day, it took about 20 minutes to cook after
a few hours soaking.
In some books they say
thirty minutes cooking, but I think they would be mush if I cooked them that long.
So I'm going to add water just to cover,
put them on the stove,
and bring to a boil.
Here are my black eyed peas which have foamed up.
Skim the phone,
put the lid on,
turn it to simmer for 20 minutes.
Time's up for my black eyed peas, and these have cooked for 20 minutes.
Let's see if they're done.
Perfect! Mmmh!
I'm going to let them cool and then put them in freezer containers
to keep in the freezer until I need them.
You can use black eye peas to make stews, soups, salads,
hummus, refried beans.
Black eyed peas are a traditional
New Years dish in the south, for making
Hoppin John but we like them anytime.
They're very very tasty. Thank you for joining me for basic bean cooking.
I hope that you feel encouraged to try using a pressure cooker.
I found it to be the best
kitchen investment that I've ever made.
You can find our basic bean recipe on
savvy vegetarian dot com.
Just search in the upper right hand corner
for basic beans and it'll pop right up.