Saving Money: Cooking Dried Beans

I'm linking up today with The Vanilla Tulip to share my own Thrifty Thoughts. We live on (almost) one income, and we like to make our dollars stretch, especially when it comes to grocery shopping. One of my best money saving measures is using dried beans instead of buying canned beans. Canned beans are convenient, but if you eat a lot of beans like we do, they add up quickly. The BPA that lines ALL cans (except one brand) is questionable, so I do my best to avoid it whenever possible. It's in EVERYthing, so it's nearly impossible to eliminate completely.

Dried beans are EASY to cook, and they can and freeze beautifully. You can cook them on your stove top, slow cooker, or in a pressure cooker. I find mine have the best flavor when cooked in a slow cooker and seasoned, but I also find myself in a time crunch a lot, and use my pressure cooker. (It was a gift from my mother-in-law a few years ago, and I absolutely love it.)

1. Buy your dried beans from any grocery store. I like to buy organic or locally grown beans, but the nearest natural foods market is 45 minutes away, and sometimes Wal-Mart has to suffice. Dried beans are significantly cheaper than canned beans. I usually use 2-16 ounce bags of small red beans in chili. Yes, we eat beans in our chili. Sorry, to any of you die-hard Texas chili fans out there.

2. Rinse your beans, and if you're particular, remove any broken beans or rocks. Yes, sometimes there are rocks in dried beans. You can soak your beans ahead of time to speed up the cooking time. I usually don't soak my beans.

3. Cover them with water per your pressure cooker's instructions, or put them on the stove top or in the slow cooker. The slow cooker is definitely the slowest cooking method (hence, the name), but I hate to watch and stir beans on the stove top. Sometimes, I will throw in celery, onion, spices, or a bay leaf to flavor the beans, and sometimes I don't. If you salt your beans during the cooking process, it can make them tough, so wait until they are finished cooking to add salt. If you use a pressure cooker, I use this site to determine cooking times.

4. Enjoy! Depending on the type of bean and what I'm going to use them for, sometimes I rinse them with water, and sometimes I save the water they were cooked in. I make up big batches at a time and will freeze them in 2-cup portions for later use. I know people who can their beans, but I haven't added canning to my bag of tricks, yet.