Frugal Food #13: Dried Beans

I confess, there's a reason I made dried beans the topic of my thirteenth post on frugal food: a lot of people are scared of them.  There's just something about those bags of hard beans that strikes fear in the heart of most grocery shoppers, that keeps them buying cans of soft, precooked beans instead of the much, much cheaper dried ones.

Once upon a time, I too was afraid to take those dried beans home and cook them.  It sounded like such hard work--sorting out possible small stones and damaged beans, soaking them, cooking them, then seasoning them before putting them on the table to eat.  Oh, it was all so overwhelming!

Until I actually did it.  And found out it wasn't so difficult.  It was really, pretty easy.  Spend a few minutes inspecting the beans for dirt/stones/bad ones, rinse the beans, dump in a pan, cover with water, go to bed!  The beans soaked while I slept, absorbing water and beginning to soften.  The next day, I brought them to a boil, covered, turned the heat down, and simmered for a while (or shut the heat off entirely, depending on what type of beans they were).  From there, treat them just like kidney beans, or northern beans, or lima beans, or garbanzo beans from a can.  Add to favorite recipe, serve, and eat! 

Viola, chili that was suddenly much, much cheaper because I got a whole pound of beans--that cooks up into a big batch of chili--for less than one can of 'chili beans' (which makes only a couple servings of chili).  Baked beans that were much tastier than the ones from the can.  Hummus made with garbanzo beans I didn't have to wash syrupy liquid off of first--hooray!

And the variety of beans,oh my!  There are so many different kinds of beans.  Many, many, more kinds of dried beans than you can find ready to eat in cans. Each with it's own subtle difference in flavor.  Black beans, cranberry beans, navy beans, great northern beans, kidney beans, lima beans, garbanzo beans (aka chickpeas), pinto beans, jacobs cattle beans, the list is endless.

You can even grow them yourself, should you have the inclination.  Those bags of dried beans in the store, they are, yes, seeds!  Seeds that have not been treated to inhibit sprouting (obviously since you can't eat those chemicals and you can't peel the beans, lol), so therefore, they will grow if you put them in your garden.

Not only are the dried beans cheaper than ready to eat canned beans of the same variety, they are also full of protein.  A pound of dried beans is much, much cheaper than a pound of meat and will go much further in a meal too.  Substituting some meals of beans with a few dinners made with meat each month will help cut your food budget.

To help get you started, here's a link to a chart on soaking and cooking times for different types of beans:  http://www.recipenet.org/health/articles/beans_chart.htm