Dried Beans, Not So Hard After All

I've been stumped by dried beans my whole life. I sometimes bought them because they were cheap, but then they would sit in my pantry forever because I wasn't confident enough in what to do with them. 

Eventually they would call out to me and I would fly by a recipe from the back of the packaging or from the internet that promised fully cooked beans in almost no time, just boil, simmer and voilà.
The beans never came out though, they were always undercooked. 

One of the huge benefits of living with roommates is that you can learn their culinary techniques through osmosis. So finally I have learned to master the lowly dried bean thanks to my roommate Dave. 

Step 1: Soak Your Beans
Submerged by a couple inches of water, sat on the counter overnight. By the time I was ready to cook the beans had expanded and absorbed almost all the water.

Step 2: Make Your Base
I wasn't going for creativity on this project so I started out the way I start almost every meal, by chopping onions. 

I diced them fine and sweated them in a mixture of butter and camelina oil in the liner of the crock pot over medium stovetop heat. After 5 or 10 minutes I transferred the liner to the crock-pot. Of course a more imaginative and interesting base would have been cool too, next time maybe.

Step 3: Crock-Pot!
Here is the magic of the whole operation: Low and Slow. I added the beans, water, salt, a few crushed cloves of garlic, a bay leaf, and a smoked uncured pork hock, yum.

I set it to low and walked away.
By the time I got in late that night the whole house smelled delicious and the bean juice was properly dank.

24 hours on the crock-pot and lunch was served.

The beans were velvety through and came with a terrific bean juice that had soaked up that pork flavor.  Honestly they were better than canned.
After lunch I adjusted the seasoning by adding a full packet of Sazon Goya. It is a blend of NaCl and MSG with a few spices. I mean the beans already had plenty of umami from the ham hock, but to me its just not arroz frijol without Sazon Goya.

I broke up the pork so that the meat would come in bite sized chunks mixed in with the beans and then removed the bone.

For safe storage I transferred the beans to a thin-walled steel pot with a lid and placed it in an ice bath in my sink for an hour and a half. This cooled it down quickly so that bacteria had no time to invade. Then it went in the fridge for fine yumminess all week!  


Now if you don't own a slow cooker, you may be wondering how you too can enjoy the miracle of dried beans. If you have an electric stovetop you can use the same methodology with the pot simmering on a low setting (1.5~2 out of 10) for 24 hours. If you have a gas stove, it honestly is not safe to walk away for that long with the stove running... get a slow cooker... or borrow your neighbors.