Old Fashioned On Purpose

100. How To Can Dry Beans

March 30, 2020 Jill Winger
Old Fashioned On Purpose
100. How To Can Dry Beans
Show Notes Transcript

With everything going on in the world today, it’s important to always check back in on some basics.  For everyone that has followed me for any period of time, you’d know canning is easily one of my favorite things when it comes to homesteading.  I know what many are you thinking right now:  why can dry beans?  On today’s episode I’m going to explain the many benefits of canning dry beans as well as share my favorite canning method.

LINKS:
>> Step-by-Step Tutorial: https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2013/04/how-to-can-dry-beans.html
>> How to Use a Pressure Canner: https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/2012/08/how-to-use-a-pressure-canner-part-1.html
>> Canning Made Easy eBook: https://www.learnhowtocan.com/learntocan331463029

>> Click here to get my special master-pack:  https://www.theprairiehomestead.com/masterpack

>> Head over to www.theprairiehomestead.com for from-scratch recipes, homestead inspiration, and old-fashioned tutorials.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the old fashioned on purpose podcast. So I have been watching the news with extra interest lately. There's lots of talks of quarantines. People are posting pictures of Costco being sold out of toilet paper and bottled water. There's just this underlying feeling of some panic building lately. Now I am not someone who operates out of fear, but I do like to be prepared pretty much all the time and that is something I have felt strongly about way before the latest news reports. Therefore we always have plenty of food tucked away in our pantry, in our larder, in our freezers. And I just like that feeling of knowing that we could stay home if we needed to for awhile. Don't have to go run to the store and we would be just fine. So home canned dry beans are one of my favorite pantry staples right up there with my home canned broth or home canned tomato sauce. And today I want to run you through the steps on how to make them yourself. I'm your host Jill winger and this is the podcast for the trailblazers, the Mavericks, the makers, the homesteaders. The modern pioneers and the backyard farmers. If you have found yourself disenchanted with conformity and you just kinda like to swim upstream while the rest of society rides the river of least resistance, well you found your tribe. Whenever I talk about canning dry beans, these two questions always come up without fail. So the first one is why on earth and how are you canning dry beans? Like are you putting the dry beans in a jar and putting a lid on and how does that work? So it's a little bit confusing, but let me clarify. When I say canning dry beans, I'm just referring to beans like Navy Pinto, kidney, garbanzo, like beans that are dried and we rehydrate them, put them in jars and pressure canned them so they're not technically dry when they're in the jars. It's just the way I kind of differentiate them from canning green beans, you know, or some fresh bean from the garden. So that's what I'm referring to. Hopefully that's as clear as mud. And the second question I get is why would you even bother with that? Because dry beans will last in your pantry quite awhile, which is a great point because yes, if you have a bucket or a jar of Pinto beans, they will last in your cupboards, I would say six to 12 months easily. And they're just fine. They're going to be ready to go. They're not going to go rotten or rancid. So you don't have to can beans necessarily. However, the reason I do it anyway is because, well, there's a lot of reasons. It's very convenient. It makes sure I'm not clogging up my freezer with jars or Ziploc baggies full of cooked beans. It's kind of one of my GoTo convenience foods, but dry beans, believe it or not, actually do get to a point sometimes where they're past the point of no return. And I've actually have had this happen before. You know, they last a while, but if they go a couple of years on the shelf, they dry out to the point where you cannot get them to soften. And it's crazy. And I've had it happen. And it's really disappointing because you'll soak your beans, you'll put them in a pot, you cook them for a couple hours, and you go to taste them and they're still crunchy and you cook them a little bit more and they're still crunchy and they just won't rehydrate. So if you want to keep your beans more than six months to a year, canning them can help prolong their shelf life just a little bit. And it's really not that hard. So the one thing that's really important though, when we're talking about canning beans or any low acid food, AKA beans, meat, broth, soups, whatever, you know what I'm going to say, right? You have got to use a pressure canner. No if, ands or buts. Non-negotiable. You must use a pressure canner. And I talk more about the why of this and why it's kind of a big deal. And it can be really dangerous to skip this rule in episodes number 79 and number 12 of this podcast. So if you're curious or you're feeling like you want to push the boundaries a little bit, you know, I love pushing boundaries, not when it comes to canning. So go check out those episodes if you need the scoop on this science. But for today's episode, I'm just going to say use a pressure canner and you will be fine. I have noticed that when I pressure cook or pressure can beans, this is just a little aneicdote, random, we feel like we have less digestive issues than when I just cook them on the stove top. Even if they're unsoaked because sometimes like I will put dry beans in my instant pot and cook them in there. And this is a separate thing from canning, right? You don't use an instant pot that can, so don't, don't confuse that. But I've noticed that when we do use a pressure cooker to cook the beans, we don't have the gas issues that we usually would have if we had cooked them on the stove top. I don't know why that is a thing, but it works. So just random information there. But it's just, it's really handy to have. And we like to use home canned beans, like I'll throw them in chili or soup or stew. Honestly, my kids actually really like them for lunches, which I think is a little bit weird, but it's one of their favorite lunches. So we will put a, you know, we take them out of the jar, might heat them up on the stove. Sometimes they like them cold or at room temperature, which isn't my favorite, but they're cool with it. They'll put a little salt, a little garlic powder, a little pepper, whatever herbs we might have laying around and they eat them plain or with chips or you know, dip a tortilla in it. So it's kind of like our last minute, Oh man, there's nothing for lunch. Let's eat some beans. So that might not be your thing, but it works for us. So anyway, let's talk through the process here. It's very, very simple. You're going to love this. So first off you got to soak the beans and there's a couple different ways you can do this. Personally, I just grabbed the beans. I will throw them in a big bowl, cover them generously with water and let them sit overnight. If you hear this episode and you want to can the beans like right now and you don't have a 12 hour period to let them soak, you can also do a quick soak method, which is simply where you put the dry beans in a pot, cover them with water, bring them to a boil and then turn off the burner and let them stand for an hour in the hot water. And then you would proceed with the rest of this technique. So it really doesn't matter. Just kind of depends on your timeframe than what your schedule looks like for the next couple of days. All right, so regardless of whether you do an overnight soak or a quick soak, we're going to take the soaked beans, we're going to drain them. So you're gonna get all that water off, pour down the drain, and then we're going to put them in a large stockpot and cover them up with fresh water. Put a lid on there, put them on high on the stove top and bring them to a boil. You might want to watch the lid once they start boiling. Cause beans love to boil over. Primarily after you have cleaned your stove top burners. It only happens when they're clean. If you have a really dirty stove top, you can be rest assured they will not boil over. It is a documented scientific phenomenon. But anyway, so bring them to a boil for just 30 minutes, then shut it off. We don't want to cook them. We're not trying to cook them to the point of where we could eat them right now. We just want to get them hydrated and a little bit softened. So by then we want to get our jars. We want to make sure they're hot. I like to put a teaspoon of sea salt in each of my quart size jars for flavor. It has nothing to do with preservation quality or anything like that. It's just a flavor thing. So if you're trying to avoid salt, you can omit, omit it altogether. If you're using pint jars, you can use half a teaspoon of salt instead of a full teaspoon but anyway, I put the salt in, I grabbed my beans, fill up the jars, I use my cooking liquid to fill the jars up to one inch of Headspace at the top, wipe down the rims, put the lids on, and then we process them for, well, we're at high altitude, so we use 15 pounds of pressure for the rest of you. At normal altitude, you can probably use 10 pounds, but I would suggest looking at your canner owner's manual to know for sure. I let my pressure canner work on those beans for an hour and a half for my quart jars and I go an hour in, I think 15 minutes if I'm using pints. And then, you know, let the pressure canner come down to zero pressure, open the, the lid, uh, pull them out and stick them in your pantry and it's so simple. But it's just one of those things you can add to your pantry, whether it's just your regular rotation of food or it's your kind of preparedness sort of pantry, but they're just easy and ready to go. It's, I think probably going to be cheaper than buying cans of beans at the grocery store. Plus you don't have to worry about whatever additives might be in those beans because all you know exactly what's in there. Salt, water and beans. Super, super simple. So, two quick things. So first off I kind of ran through the pressure canning instructions quickly. I had a pressure canning tutorial on the blog that's quite extensive. If you want to get into more of the nitty gritty. I also created a little ebook and video set. It's all digital, very affordable, where I will walk you through all the details of what it looks like to can all sorts of things, water, bath pressure and I'll leave a link to that in the show notes as well, just in case you want to check it out. So there's, that's one way to get a little more in depth information, but I wanted to also talk about cooking, unhydrated, non hydrated. I'm struggling with English today. Beans that have not been soaked in water versus beans that have, because sometimes like I have this recipe on the blog and it has a lot of traffic on it and I'll get people commenting and they'll say, well I don't really want to have to soak the beans or cook the beans for 30 minutes before I put them in the jars. I'd rather just put dry beans and jars, fill them with water and call it good. And I know that, I know people have done that and they've said it worked. My concern with that is twofold. Number one, my concern is that beans will continue to soak up water when they're in the pressure canner if they've not been cooked a little bit beforehand and we're going to have an issue with liquid loss, jars not sealing, things might get funky. My other concern is the method for canning dry beans is to cook them for 30 minutes first to make sure they're completely hot. And that's, I, I just like to follow recommended procedure when it comes to canning because there's a reason they recommend what they do. There's a method to the madness. So you're gonna see me following the recommendation. There are different ideas and recommendations or opinions online. So take them with a grain of salt and do I think I always err on the side of following the recommendations when it comes to canning just because safety with your preserved foods is kind of a big deal. But that's just my little spiel. So anyway, I think it's just always a good idea to have food in your pantry, even if the news isn't reporting scary things at that point in time. Remember we're not operating out of a place of fear. It's just a place of being competent in our preparedness and competent in our skills. And here's the deal. Here's the deal guys. Homesteading sets us up for success way ahead of any news reports way ahead of any concerns. And I don't care if your homestead is in the city or it's far from town, you guys are good. Like I'm super proud of all of the measures that you guys have taken over the years to build your pantries and learn new skills. And so I think homesteading really sets us up for success. So it has begun my friend gardening season that is, and maybe you're not quite digging out in the garden yet. I know I'm not cause there's still snow on the ground, but odds are you're likely in the thick of planning and dreaming and buying seeds. So to make the process just a little bit easier for you, whether you're a newbie or inexperienced Gardner, I put together a little pack of gardening printables as well as a list of some of my favorite veggie varieties. And you can grab the whole thing for free over at theprairiehomestead.com/gardenplan. We'll leave that link in the show notes as well. And that's it for today. Don't forget to hit subscribe, so all the new episodes will show up automatically in your podcast. Player of choice just makes it a little bit easier for you, and if you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you could take a quick minute to leave a review or rating. That just helps more people find the podcast and bring homesteading into their lives. Thanks so much for listening and we'll chat more on the next episode of the old fashioned on purpose podcast.