When I was at the grocery store last week, I went to grab a couple of cans of beans. In the grande scheme of things, I’d rather cook my own, but you can’t deny the convenience of having them cooked and ready to go at a moments notice.
And then I looked over and saw dried beans for 79¢ per pound. Canned beans are 79¢ a can. My immediate response was I’m retired, I have all the time in the world, I’ll can my own. I mean… why not, right?!?
I did a quick search on Chef Google and found a score of recipes – all identical. It seems there really is only one way to do this. Okay, two. The National Center for Home Food Preservation states to cook the beans for 30 minutes after soaking overnight. Every recipe I saw stated that cooking the beans made them too mushy.
I brine-soaked the beans, drained them, placed them in the jars, covered with boiling water, and processed. You need to pressure can these. You cannot do a water bath.
A pound of beans should give you three pints of cooked beans. I had 13 pint jars and could have used 15. I didn’t process the cannellini beans since Victor is using some of them for dinner, tonight. I just cooked them normally, pulled out some for dinner, and the rest went into the fridge for soup later in the week.
The other beans were small white beans, pink beans. roman beans, and red beans.
Canning Dried Beans
Procedure: Place dried beans or peas in a large pot and cover with water. Soak 12 to 18 hours in a cool place. Drain water. To quickly hydrate beans, you may cover sorted and washed beans with boiling water in a saucepan. Boil 2 minutes, remove from heat, soak 1 hour and drain. Cover beans soaked by either method with fresh water and boil 30 minutes. Add ½ teaspoon of salt per pint or 1 teaspoon per quart to the jar, if desired. Fill jars with beans or peas and cooking water, leaving 1-inch headspace.
Adjust lids and process at 11 lbs for 90 minutes for quarts or 75 minutes for pints.
As I mentioned earlier, following recommendations on numerous websites, I didn’t cook the beans for the additional 30 minutes prior to canning, and placed the soaked beans directly into the hot jars and covered with boiling water. But, I’m giving you the official recipe. You may do as you see fit.
I think this is going to be a nice addition to the pantry!