As a vegetarian I love beans as a hearty source of protein and as a Nova Scotian I love baked beans as a part of who I am. There aren’t too many foods that I grew up with that I still eat but baked beans are one of them. They were made with the “winter beans” that my family has been growing since at least my great-grandfather that I have since renamed “Burns Beans” (because I haven’t been able to find beans like them anywhere else). Once I left Nova Scotia for school, I went years without ever trying to cook them and having them only on the occasional trip home. A few years ago I decided to make them. Jim wasn’t fully convinced that it was a good idea as I took hour to make them but that quickly changed as we ate them. Now baked beans are a regular meal in our winter diet and we’ve learned tricks to speed up the meal.

Baked beans don’t have the reputation as a community building food, unless your community thrives on toilet humour. But there are a few tricks while cooking with dried beans that helps make them more digestable. Even the skeptics at my office have been convinced when I brought them in to our holiday potluck.  Correctly cooking beans not only makes the beans a more community friendly food but also there are fewer GHGs emissions. Here are the three essential steps to cooking dried beans:

1. Soaking – rinse the beans and cover with 3-4 times as much water as there are dried beans and either soak overnight or bring to a full boil, turn off the heat, and let soak for 1 hour
2. Rinsing – it is essential that beans are well rinsed at this stage since it contains the sugars that cause indigestion.
3. Cooking – cover the beans with fresh water and bring them to a boil. If you are cooking them in a pot bring them to a hard boil for the first 10 minutes and then simmer them until they are soft (which varies depending on the type of bean). Jim and I bought a pressure cooker a couple of years ago and it was an amazing investment. It takes the cooking time of beans down to 10 or 15 minutes from 45 minutes to an hour and a half.

The recipe I use is from the cookbook More with Less. The beans can soak overnight and cook in the morning as you get ready (especially if you have a pressure cooker), be assembled in a slow cooker before leaving and ready by the time you get home.

Basic Baked Beans

Soak overnight or by quick method:

1 lb beans (about two cups or so)
2 qts water

Drain the water and add fresh. The bring the beans to a boil and cook in a pressure cooker for 15 minutes or simmer in a pot until tender, about 1 1/2 hrs. Drain, reserving liquid

If using an oven preheat oven to 300 degrees and combine the following in a 2 qt. casserole dish.  Or assemble in a slowcooker.

cooked beans
1/2 c. molasses
1/4 c. ketchup
1 tsp mustard
2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 onion, chopped
2tbsp olive oil
1-2 tsp of chilli powder
bean liquid to cover

Bake 4-8 hours, adding liquid occasionally if necessary when using an oven.