Cooking Beans In The "Manner Of Rancho Gordo"

[Willy]

Based on ATK recommendations regarding a presoak in salt water, I am inclined to follow the ATK method, even though RG beans apparently don't require a presoak. Your thoughts/practice?

Thanks in advance for your comments.

[Donw]

Maybe I don’t know any better but I pre soak for at least several hours before. However I don’t use salted water either and wait much later in the cook before adding any. (I don’t use an instant pot.)

[barelfly]

RG beans can be cooked without the soak. Few threads on here of others talking about their experience with this. I don’t cook RG beans as much as others, but I’ve learned from them that it’s not needed.

fzxdoc is one of the RG Beans experts, she may be able to provide more info.

[Willy]

Presoak not needed, but ATK claims a brine presoak makes the beans "better".

[Mosca]

Regular beans are fine without the soak, too. Think about it. Why wouldn’t they be? What happens during the soak that is different from what happens when cooking them?

A pack of supermarket beans is cheap, like about a buck. Try it and see. It’ll cost you $1, plus about 90 minutes-2 hours. And there’s a 50/50 chance (I know it’s 100%, but you don’t) you’ll get a nice pot of beans at the end.

[barelfly]

Willy - sorry about that - I missed salt water in the original post. I have not done that before.

[Mosca]

For almost 50 years I either soaked overnight, or did the boil/2 hour rest.

A couple years ago I started just doing the 15 minute boil followed by a long simmer, which is on the side of the RG bean packets. There is no difference that I can tell. The beans come out the same either way.

[Willy]

Like I indicated, it's not the presoak per se, it's the brining per ATK.

[Mosca]

Ah, I see. I assumed the salt in any case. I had learned, again long ago, to not salt beans at all! I cook in salted water.

[ItsAllGoneToTheDogs]

I rarely if ever soak them, the garbonzo beans are an exception if my intent is hummus

[SheilaAnn]

I do not salt until the end……

[fzxdoc]

According to Kenji Lopez-Alt in his Serious Eats article, brining the beans during a soak results in a creamier bean.
Here's what he says in a nutshell:

When unsalted beans cook, their interiors can end up swelling faster than their skins can keep up with, resulting in skins that rupture instead of enlarging along with the rest of the bean. Salted beans will grow proportionally, resulting in fully tender, creamy, intact beans that are well seasoned throughout.

Moral of the story? Make sure to salt your bean-soaking water to the tune of one tablespoon per quart (15 grams per liter), and season the bean-cooking water as well. Just don't season the cooking water too heavily—it can reduce and become too salty to eat as the beans cook.

I always soak supermarket beans, because they can be as much as 2 years old or more, right off the shelf. However, Rancho Gordo beans, because they are fresher than supermarket beans, don't have to be soaked. You CAN soak them, but you don't have to. They still turn out creamy.

Just don't cook the beans in the soaking water, salted or not. Lectins (toxins) from the beans are in the soaking water. That's one reason to soak. But soaking alone does not eliminate all the lectins.

Lectins are killed by boiling the beans--212° for 15 to 30 minutes (scientists prefer 30 min), or pressure cooking them, which takes them to temps as high as 240°.

Since I am at 3700ft altitude, my water boils around 206°, which is not hot enough for the rapid boil--I'd have to boil longer, so I use an Instant Pot for convenience and carefree lectin-killing.

To go a step further:

Adding a little baking soda to the cooking water can also result in a creamier bean, according to this Serious Eats article:

Beans soaked in salt or baking soda brines performed much better in comparison to those soaked in just water. Beans brined in baking soda performed even better than those in the salt brine. This was true across the board regardless of the type of the bean.

Plus thinner skinned beans like black beans don't really require a soak, if you're of a bean soaking mindset, but thick skinned kidney beans do, asserts this same article.

The best thing to do might be to read a couple of well-vetted articles, set up your game plan, and then experiment with your bean-cooking setup. After all, water temperature/altitude, age of the beans, cooking pot, soak/no soak, salt/baking soda (or not) are a lot of variables.

Pick a set of these variables, cook up some beans and see how you like them. If you're not satisfied, change one of the variables the next time you cook a pot of beans. Repeat as needed You'll get to your perfect bean-cooking setup pretty quickly.

Here's my method for cooking up a generic pot of beans in the IP:

1 lb Rancho Gordo beans
Look for debris, then rinse and drain.
Pour in Instant Pot.
Add:
6 cups water
1 tsp granulated garlic powder
1 tsp granulated onion powder
1 tsp kosher salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
Pressure cook on High, then Natural Pressure Release (NPR)
Season to taste after NPR.

The pressure cooking times vary according to the size and skin thickness of the beans. FWIW, a month or so ago, I posted my own pressure cooker times for 3700ft altitude over on the Rancho Gordo Beans topic.

Kathryn

[barelfly]

Good stuff!!!

[CaptainMike]

Such a wonderful mind you have there. You put in the work so we don't have to.

[yakima]

The 2 articles linked above are very informative. The 1st is easier to work thru. But the latter has a useful paragraph at the end with salt and baking soda ratios.

As an aside, the use of baking soda here, and to add alkalinity to fried chicken, seems to advance some new understanding of chemistry. As to the chicken, it clearly works for me.

[LA Pork Butt]

I pre soak red beans before cooking in an Instant Pot. Doing so cuts the cook time in half.

[Mosca]

But you have to add the soaking time. I get it, that it’s time shifting and workflow management, but either way it should be allowed for. One circumstance might be easier one way, a different circumstance the other!

[LA Pork Butt]

Mosca Tom, most of my pre soaks are over night so the only time it takes to put them in the bowl and fill it with water. The point of the cooking 20 minutes less was that cooking the full time would probably turn them to mush.