Pressure Cooking Dried Beans

http://www.durgan.org/URL/?JMZRE 29 October 2011 Pressure Cooking Dried Beans

Most of the dried beans purchased from a bulk food store were pressure cooked and play a large part in my diet. Beans must be thoroughly cooked to digest without difficulty. It is almost impossible to over-cook dried beans, except the whole white common navy beans which I do not use, due to its high starch content.

Method: Selected are about four cups of a mixture of all the beans,which makes a lot of finished product. The beans are washed and boiled vigorously for about 20 minutes. The water from boiling is discarded and the beans rinsed. The beans are placed in an colander insert and placed into the pressure cooker. The rim of the pressure cooker is wiped with vegetable oil to prevent the gasket from sticking. In general never use a pressure cooker without an insert, which will prevent bubbling particles from clogging the rocker port and prevent the safety port from blowing out. A blow-out spreads a mess all over the kitchen, and takes about two hours to clean up.The insert prevents water from touching the beans, thus they are steam cooked at 15 PSI for about 90 minutes.

After the beans are pressure cooked, they are placed in a pot and the pre-prepared condiments are added as per your choice. I use ketchup and molasses as a base and add almost anything available to suit my taste. The beans are then boiled gently for about 30 minutes to insure adequate mixing. The pressure steam cooked beans will absorb a lot of water so add the necessary water to get the consistency desired. After cooling, those that are not for immediate use are placed in plastic containers and frozen until required.