(Over)cooking dry beans?

January 24, 2018 1:09 PM

The weather is finally cool enough to make Boston baked beans. I did the quick soak, which says to boil for 2-3 minutes then soak for an hour. I didn't hear the water boil and accidentally boiled them for maybe 15 -20 minutes. Have I ruined the texture of the beans, and do I need to start over?

This was on the stovetop. They will be baking for 6 hours. What I'm worried about is that they'll be mushy after I bake them.

Why do most recipes say to boil 2-3 minutes and then soak for an hour? Should I still soak these for an hour?

posted by shapes that haunt the dusk to Food & Drink (7 answers total)

I’d finish the soak and not worry about it. Any textural change will be minor, in my experience.

The 2-3 minutes and then soak for an hour is a faster alternative to soaking 24 hours. Even regular boiled bean recipes call for this. But honestly, unless you are super pickey about bean texture, you can just boil them from dry, no soaking needed (at least for beans in the kidney/pinto/black range. Giant white beans are of course different).
posted by SaltySalticid at 1:21 PM on January 24, 2018

In my bean-cooking experience: at most your beans will be a fraction more mushy if you cook them exactly as the recipe dictates. You can always start checking the texture like 40 mintues sooner and see if you like how they are sooner.

One good thing you may have inadvertently done, too, is to make your beans less....flatulent. The "boil like crazy and then soak" method is how I was told to pre-soak beans because it not only shortens the soaking time, but it also seems to cut back on whatever sugar or enzyme or whatever it is that is in beans that gives people the digestive issue that causes gas. Or - in the words of a Greek playwright I once knew, "if you boil first and then soak, it gets rid of the farts."

So yeah, still soak for an hour, and then just spot-check during the last 45 minutes of cooking or so and you should be fine.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:34 PM on January 24, 2018

(note - according to lore I've heard, gets rid of farts only if you drain the soaking water and cook in clean water)
posted by aimedwander at 2:15 PM on January 24, 2018

I think it will be fine. I've run into dry beans not being cooked enough and being hard when I've followed directions, so I always boil them longer than the directions say.
posted by AppleTurnover at 3:50 PM on January 24, 2018

We have a bean recipe that calls for simmering in az slow cooker for 12 hours. You should be fine.
posted by SemiSalt at 3:51 PM on January 24, 2018

(note - according to lore I've heard, gets rid of farts only if you drain the soaking water and cook in clean water)

Ah, yes, confirming for the record that this is true. But the point still stands that a "boil like hell and then soak" treatment will not break your beans.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:14 PM on January 24, 2018

Bean update! I baked the beans and they turned out alright. If anything messed up the texture, it was probably the cooking pot I used; for lack of a proper ceramic bean pot, I used a covered glass casserole, and I think things ended up cooking weird. They're less sticky, and maybe a little firmer than I remember. Also, I think the salt pork I used was actually too lean (which is funny because I usually have the opposite problem with salt pork). Anyway, the results are perfectly edible, if not the beans I grew up with.

I also made brown bread, and that turned out great. I am so tired that I was literally about to offer some to all of you as thanks for weighing in. I guess I can only say an enthusiastic thanks! and say that I appreciated the advice.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:08 AM on January 25, 2018