I love my electric pressure cooker.
And guess who uses the most gas/electricity or whatever you and your wife cook with.
Refrigeration is necessary when marinating meats, but not when soaking beans. Just a waste of energy.
We just had a pot of ham and white beans last week (had a nice ham bone from a Sunday roast ham). After cleaning and rinsing we soaked the beans overnight, uncovered on the counter. Drained the beans, then started the cooking process a little before noon the next day.
I love my electric pressure cooker.
Do you soak your beans before using the pressure cooker method?
I haven't used one in ages.
I know some people on here don't agree with this but I stick with the old advice not to add salt at the beginning of cooking as I do find it toughens the beans. I add it when they are nearly done..
Yes...why? you ask...because my Mother did.
I have three of the "old fashioned" pressure cookers (Presto?). I was always a bit nervous about using them since my mom had hers explode because she forgot it was on the stove...hence, why I treated myself to a digital, electric one.I've wondered about those. Mine is the old-fashioned Prestige type with weights that spin when up to pressure. Not much fine-tuned control really so I don't use it for anything delicate.
Interesting. A very small proportion of salt then - probably not enough to season the beans though. I didn't know about soaking in salted water but a lot of old recipes tell you to put some bicarbonate of soda* in the soaking water. (*Sorry, I meant baking soda)I have been soaking my beans in salted water for a few years now, per ATK.
"In recent testing, we’ve found that soaking dried beans in mineral-rich; hard tap water can toughen their skins. Some recipes recommend using distilled water to avoid this issue, but we’ve discovered a simpler solution: adding salt to the tap water, which prevents the magnesium and calcium in the water from binding to the cell walls, and it will also displace some of the minerals that occur naturally in the skins. We found that three tablespoons of salt per gallon of soaking water is enough to guarantee soft skins."
Cooking Beans 101 | Christopher Kimball Blog
Brining beans? Yes! - Home Cooking - Chowhound
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mad Cook
And guess who uses the most gas/electricity or whatever you and your wife cook with.
I thought the question was about soaking or not soaking beans?Er, yes!
And my answer was to a poster who said that he and his wife differed in this. If you soak beans before cooking they cook quicker than if you cook un-soaked one. Therefore soaked beans cook quicker than un-soaked ones, using less gas/electricity or whatever you cook with.
Do you understand the connection to the question now?