I was wrong about beans in the Instant Pot. Dead wrong! Last year I told you that cooking
beans in the instant pot is risky business. Works for sturdy beans like black and pinto,
but not for others like cannellini and great northern. Well, turns out Instant pot is the
easiest and most reliable way to cook all beans including those infamously delicate
white beans.
Ok, so what happened to change my mind? Well, ah, Instant Pot kinda started sponsoring my
channel….
Gotcha. You know the deal, not only are my opinions my own, but the money is my own too.
Instant pot is not sponsoring me and I paid for my pot myself.
Here is the real story behind the beans. It all started with your wonderful comments.
When I first got my Instant Pot, I played around with the pressure cooking settings
for beans. I mean that’s how I’ve cooked beans before -- in a stove top pressure cooker,
so that made sense to me at the time. That didn’t go very well. My stove top pressure
cooker worked a lot better. If you want to know more about my pressure cooking experiments,
check out the link below this video. I have data. I have graphs. I was totally convinced
that Instant Pot was not the answer to delicate beans.
I mentioned that in the video where I reviewed the Instant Pot, and many of you told me to
try the slow cooking setting. My initial reaction was why would I want to baby-sit my beans
for many hours. Bean are unpredictable. Even the same variety might cook longer or shorter
depending on that year’s harvest or how old they were or exactly how long you soaked
them. With a pressure cooker I only need to pay attention for 30 min or so. With a slow
cooker, the cooking time could be a whole day and I expected to pay attention for at
least a couple of those hours. But my fears were completely unfounded.
For my first test, I tried the forgiving pintos and made myself available to monitor their
progress. They were done at 12 hours, but were fine at 13, 14, 15, and 16 hours. At
16 hours I gave up and went to bed. It was a long day my friends. So emboldened with
my success, I tried all sorts of other beans. Almost all of them did well at 12 hour mark.
The only ones that didn’t were the thin skinned white beans (cannellini, great northern,
and navy). Those did well at the 7 hour mark. And the beauty of instant pot vs a stove top
pressure cooker is that
you don’t need to be around.
If your beans finish cooking at 3 in the morning or while you are at work, the pot will turn
off all by itself.
Another thing I was wrong about is soaking. I used to think that soaking beans was a must
for 3 reasons. It helps them cook more evenly. It allows you to brine the beans in a salt
solutions which reduced how much the skins burst. And it helps people digest beans. Many
people like me have stomach aches from beans and since I was getting stomach aches even
from soaked beans, I didn’t even consider the possibility of not soaking them. But then
one day, I tried seriouseats.com instant pot black bean soup made from unsoaked beans (yes,
the very one that I just made a video about) and nothing terrible happened. My stomach
was fine.
I also had an interesting experience that made me realize that the soaking duration
actually affects the cooking time. I needed the same exact beans for class 2 days in a
row. On one day, I soaked them for about 8 hours and on another day for 16 hours and
they came out completely differently given the same cooking time. Just like with anything
bean related -- sometimes soaking helps and sometimes soaking hurts. If you are slow cooking
the beans, that’s like soaking and cooking all in one step. So for slow cooking, I don’t
soak.
A quick word about digestion. I heard this theory on chefsteps site that cooking beans
for a very long time at a temperature below simmer (that’s roughly 185 to 195F) breaks
down the starches and makes them easier to digest. I don’t know how to test this, I
am sure it depends on each specific bean and on each specific person. But if you’ve been
avoiding beans because of stomach issues, slow cooking is something to try.
A quick word on settings. Instant Pot has 3 settings for slow cooking. “Less”, “Normal”
and “More”. Who came up with this? Wouldn’t low, medium, and high be better terminology.
“More” sounds like you want to cook it longer. But that’s not what “more” means
here. It means higher heat. “More” worked the best for me.
Keep in mind that Instant Pot slow cooking temperatures are generally lower than most
slow cooker temperatures. In a regular slow cooker, you might want to try medium or low
because it’s crucial not to let the water move. No boiling and not even simmering. That’s
what breaks the beans down, the motion of the water.
Also, be aware that there might be some differences between instant pot models. Oh, and I also
noticed that the temperature listed in my manual didn’t correspond to what my instant
pot was actually doing. When I tested the water on the “more” setting I got 194F,
but my manual said that it should have been 200-210F. So the moral of the story is that
your mileage might vary, but once you find the setting and time that works, cooking dry
beans becomes a complete no brainer. It’s seriously less work than opening cans and
you get excellent broth. So believe it or not, I no longer cook beans in my stove top
pressure cooker.
Now that you know the back story, let’s do it. I picked the most difficult bean for
us to cook today. Great northern. They break up if you l look at them wrong. Some of them
are broken right out of the bag. I usually remove the worst offenders. These are not
heirloom beans. I got them in a regular supermarket for a dollar fifty.
Put a pound of rinsed beans into the instant pot or some other slow cooker. Add 8 cups
of cold water and salt. I use 1 and a half Tablespoons of Diamond Crystal Kosher. For
all other salts including Morton’s kosher cut that in half. You can even skip it completely
if you can’t have salt. Stir it up, cover the pot, and set the release valve to “venting”.
Press “slow cook” until you get to “more”. And set the time for 7 hours or 12 hours depending
on the bean. In this case we are cooking thin skinned white beans, so I’ll go with 7.
Below this video, I’ll list some common beans and their cooking times.
And here they are after 7 hours. Make sure to test the smallest most intact beans. Try
at least 5. No need to test the ones that are bursting. Depending on the variety, some
will burst. That’s life. The beans should be completely creamy. Slightly undercooked
beans are gross. If they are not quite there, give them another hour of cooking and test
again. The best part about slow cooking is how well the cooked beans hold up while waiting
for their tough buddies to finish.
Let me smash a few so that you can see the texture.
Look at this creaminess.
I feel like I am making an ASMR video, which means you’ll either find it satisfying or
disgusting.
As always, beans taste best when you cool them in their liquid overnight. The texture
will be better. This allows the falling apart beans to re-congeal.
Thank you Alex Ashton, Allargon, and Robert Orr for steering me in the right direction
with the slow cooking function.
Here are more thought provoking culinary tutorials for you to check out and if you are ever in
the Boston area, maybe I’ll see you in one of my classes.