My folks got me a pressure cooker for my birthday this year:
This is awesome, because we’ve been rockin’ dried bulk beans. Which in turn means we’re:
- not using new containers
- saving money
- cutting down on transport costs
- more nearly ready for the Zombie Apocalypse
After 1.5 weeks (so I’m an official master now), I’ve gathered that it’s totally unnecessary to presoak the beans, which for me was probably the major barrier to using dried beans. How am I supposed to know a day in advance what I’m going to want to cook? I’ve also gathered that 1 cup of dried beans becomes 2 – 3 cups of cooked beans. The longer the cooking time, the more the beans expand, i.e. the greater the yield. 1 – 1.5 cups of beans works pretty well with 7 cups of water (you use a little more water when you don’t presoak).
Here are a few guesses at cooking times (I’ll poke back in periodically with updates):
- Chick peas: 25 minutes
- Black-eyed peas: 10 -15 minutes (I tried 25, and they were pretty mushy)
This li’l guy worked great for VeganDad’s Chickpea Cakes, Jumpin John, and Hummus.
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4 comments ↓
Have you tried canning with it?
I’ve found the submerge-jar-in-boiling-water-for-30mins method to be perfectly effective but wonder if the pressure cooker would be quicker.
Not yet. It’s only 6 quarts, so it’s not recommended to can with it (I’m still trying to establish whether that recommendation is for safety, or to avoid having to make like 4 jars at a time–which would be fine with me). I’d like to try…I just don’t want to have exploded tomatoes and glass all over the kitchen.
And all that being said, we’ve never actually canned, believe it or not. We tend to use up everything in our garden (you can keep tomatoes in a dark box and use them into December). We do need to hit the Farmer’s Market *soon* and get some canning action on though.
The one caveat to the standard boil method, btw, is the temperature. You can get your pressure cooker up to 250, while your standard setup only gets to 212. I’ve read that 240 is the magic number for killing all the stuff you don’t want–so pressure canning is supposed to be a better longterm and/or uncooked option (for salsa, for instance).
If I can’t be certain of no explosions, I’ll probably need a canning tutorial from you, please and thank you.
So far I’ve stuck with a keep it simple approach to canning.
Just maters: slice into quarters, put in pot, bring to a boil, put boiling hot maters and mater juice into jars, wipe for a good seal, screw down tightly, submerge jars completely in boiling water for 30-40 minutes.
If you’re less lazy than me then skinning/seeding is probably good. I don’t mind skin and seeds in the kinds of sauces or soups I’d make, but they are better without.
I haven’t worried too much about temps and didn’t get sick last year. I’ve precooked all the salsa or pasta sauces I’ve made. For green beans I put them in the jar raw and poor boiling 50/50 water & vinegar over them. I made some deliciously spicy pickled green beans by adding some Dave’s Insanity sauce to the mix. I planted a West Indian Gherkin but have had trouble getting cukes to grow well in my clay soil: I’m seeing some flowers now though. Hopefully I can get some pickled gherkins too.
I love to use the pressure cooker for dried beans! You can cut down the cooking quite a bit by soaking the beans beforehand – if you happen to think to do it, that is! Sometimes I forget to. Soaked chickpeas only take 10 minutes and other beans take less time than that, some even take only 3 minutes. My pressure cooker is probably one of the most used pieces of equipment in my kitchen.
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