Hack: always perfect beans
Cooking beans is quite an art; one time they’re too hard, the next they’re too soft or far too salty. Yes, you can simply buy them in a can, but they don’t taste as good that way. There is a way to prepare dried beans yourself perfectly, and it’s not in a large pot on a gas burner. But how should you do it?
By using your oven! American chef Brooks Headley gives this tip to Food52 about cooking beans, since beans are always on the menu at his restaurant.
To start with: do you need to soak beans? According to the chef, it depends on the type of bean. He soaks high-quality beans beforehand so that they cook evenly and are ready faster. FavorFlav’s Emma, on the other hand, discovered that soaking them first or not doesn’t make much difference in terms of time.
The best way
Take a large portion of dried beans, put them in a large pot and fill the pot to the brim with water. Cover tightly with a layer of foil and cook the beans for three to eight hours (depending on the bean) in the oven at 150℃. This makes them soft and creamy, and easy to mash. You need to allow a little time for this, but once you put them in, you can do all sorts of things during the hours they’re cooking. In the end, you’ll have beans with much more flavor and a soft texture.
To salt or not to salt?
Before cooking the beans, the chef adds various ingredients such as onion, peppers and bay leaf. But you can experiment with this yourself. After cooking, he drains the beans and tosses them into a hot, oiled frying pan with salt and water to season them. According to the chef, this gives you much more control over the flavor of your beans, and they will never be too mushy, too hard or too salty again.
