Sprouting Y2K beans

[kawalekm]

In October of 1999 I bought a 50lb bag of pinto beans at the local supermarket as part of my prepartion for possible Y2K disruptions. I stored the beans in 5 gallon buckets with rubber sealed lids and intially gassed them with dry ice when they first went into storage. Gradually as I've used up the beans I'm reaching the bottum of the last bucket. Since the beans are almost 8 years old now I thought it would be fun to do a germination test. I simply covered 10 beans with a water soaked paper towel in a covered plastic dish and left them on window sill. I got 100 % germination in about 7 days.

As a side note, extra grass seed that I stored in a glass jar in the frig still germinated adequately for reseeding the yard after 7 years.

[Shamrock1121]

I've read, "Dried beans stored correctly can last indefinitely, but the older they are, sometimes the longer they may take to get soft in cooking."

I use my older beans milled into flour for "instant" refried beans. They will cook in less than 5 minutes for refried beans if they are milled into bean flour. REALLY old beans tend to be rather bitter, so watch out for that.

The older beans are best made in long-cooking recipes, or they can be cooked in the crockpot or pressure cooker. I have a recipe where you soak the beans for 20 minutes, drain, then cook along with the other ingredients in soup, and old beans just don't work well in that recipe.

You saved your beans by using correct storage methods. Some people make the mistake of storing their beans in glass jars that may have exposure to sunlight. The sunlight can dehyudrate them further and may cause them to never soften enough when cooked to be able to eat them.

If you need the recipe for making "instant" refried beans from bean flour, let me know and I'll post it for you.

-Karen

[bookwormom]

interesting post.

[kawalekm]

Typically I use my beans to make chili. I try to always soak the beans at least overnight, rinse well and then simmer them on a very low fire. I've never detected any bitterness this way.

There's a cool way to cook your beans that I got out of an ocean sailing manual. Find a styrofoam box that closely fits your bean pot. Bring the beans just to a boil and place in the insulated box with the cover on. After sitting in my box, the temperature of the beans after 2 hours is still 180F and the beans are just cooked (el dante).

I can put the pot back on the stove and bring to a boil and put it back in the box for another two hours for soft beans ready to smash. The beans come out perfect with no chance of sticking or breaking apart. The total burner-on time is only about 10 minutes and saves a lot of energy.

[Shamrock1121]

Typically I use my beans to make chili. *I try to always soak the beans at least overnight, rinse well and then simmer them on a very low fire. *I've never detected any bitterness this way.

There's a cool way to cook your beans that I got out of an ocean sailing manual. *Find a styrofoam box that closely fits your bean pot. *Bring the beans just to a boil and place in the insulated box with the cover on. *After sitting in my box, the temperature of the beans after 2 hours is still 180F and the beans are just cooked (el dante).

I can put the pot back on the stove and bring to a boil and put it back in the box for another two hours for soft beans ready to smash. *The beans come out perfect with no chance of sticking or breaking apart. *The total burner-on time is only about 10 minutes and saves a lot of energy.

I use the mini version of this method by cooking beans overnight in a thermos. Using your method I could sure make a lot more beans than in the thermos ;).

-Karen

[leera]

Interesting post.I've grown peppers and tomatoes from seeds that were 5-7 years old with great results.

I read an article on making something similar to your way of cooking beans,I'm pretty sure it was in one of the BWH anthologies.

Always wanted to try it and see how well it worked.