So, first, I learned the soak and parboil as an either/or thing -- either you soak 'em overnight, or if you don't have time to do that, you can do the boil thing instead.
And second, I never bother to do either step. I just start with clean picked-over beans and cook them until the taste and texture is what I want. Just use the cooking time in your step 3 as a guideline, and then taste them. Bigger beans take longer than smaller ones, but there's absolutely nothing you can do wrong by changing the time (although if you're burning them, use way more water than you are now) -- if they taste okay, they're done.
I suspect that all those old rules came from that era in American cooking when beans were feared because being in the same room with one might have once made someone fart, and when all vegetable matter was to be boiled into mush and submission.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2010-07-11 02:24 pm (UTC)And second, I never bother to do either step. I just start with clean picked-over beans and cook them until the taste and texture is what I want. Just use the cooking time in your step 3 as a guideline, and then taste them. Bigger beans take longer than smaller ones, but there's absolutely nothing you can do wrong by changing the time (although if you're burning them, use way more water than you are now) -- if they taste okay, they're done.
I suspect that all those old rules came from that era in American cooking when beans were feared because being in the same room with one might have once made someone fart, and when all vegetable matter was to be boiled into mush and submission.