I soaked dried pinto beans overnight, drained them, and put them in with tomatoes, onion and stock for eight hours on low. They were still slightly chalky in the middle. Everyone I ask says beans in a slow cooker are foolproof, so I assume I did something specific wrong. Do they simply need longer than eight hours, or is something in the pot working against them?
One safety point specific to slow cookers, since it comes up with beans. Red kidney beans need a proper hard boil for about ten minutes before slow cooking, because a slow cooker on low may never get hot enough to break down the compound in raw kidney beans that makes people ill. Pintos are far lower risk, but boiling any soaked bean hard for ten minutes on the stove before it goes in costs nothing and also gets the cook started.
Second cause, and it is the one nobody wants to hear: old beans never soften. Dried beans do not last forever, and beans that have sat in a warehouse or a cupboard for two or three years can be cooked all day and stay chalky.
There is no way to tell by looking. If you have followed the tomato advice and they still refuse after seven or eight hours, buy a fresh bag from somewhere with turnover and try again. It is not you.
Buy beans somewhere with turnover rather than off the back of a big supermarket shelf. Nothing on the packet tells you when they were dried, only when they were bagged, and that gap can be years.
Practically, the reliable sequence I use for any bean and tomato dish: soaked beans plus water plus aromatics on high for two hours, check, then low until a bean squashes easily between two fingers, then add tomato and seasoning for a final hour. Total time varies between five and eight hours depending on the bean and the machine, and checking beats trusting the clock.
Also make sure they stayed covered in liquid. Beans poking above the surface stop cooking and stay hard while the ones underneath go soft, and then it looks like the whole batch failed. Give them a stir at the halfway point and top up if needed.
@flaxseed_fran · last yr. · 3 replies
The tomatoes. Acid slows bean skins from softening, and a tin of tomatoes from the start will keep beans chalky for hours past when they should have been done.
The fix is order of operations. Cook the beans in plain water or stock with the onion until they are properly tender, which for soaked pintos is usually four to six hours on low, then add the tomatoes and anything else acidic and give it another hour to marry. You get soft beans and the same finished dish.
Salt is more argued about. In my experience salting from the start is fine and may even help the skins, but acid is not up for debate, it genuinely slows things down.
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@braise_and_sear · last yr.
This matches everything I have cooked. Anything acidic goes in late: tomatoes, vinegar, wine, molasses in baked beans. The classic long baked bean recipes work around exactly this problem.
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@mise_en_mess · last yr.
A pinch of baking soda in the cooking water helps too if your water is hard, which is the other thing that keeps skins tough. Small pinch though, quarter teaspoon for a pot, or the texture goes slimy and the flavour turns soapy.
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