Learning to Cook and Eat Dried Beans

Yellow Eye Beans purchased from North Bay Trading

Let's suppose that for reasons of health or economy or some other reason you have decided that you need to include more dried beans in your diet.

Here are some things for you to consider.

There is a learning curve to getting dried beans done. They are not done if they still taste "crunchy." If at first you don't succeed, try try again.

There are several ways to cook dried beans. You can cook them in a pressure cooker. You can cook them in a crock pot. You can boil them on a stove top. If it is your goal to incorporate dried beans into your diet, don't give up until you have tried all the methods, and found the one that works best for you.  (Do Google searches to find instructions for each method of cooking.)

Don't think that all dried beans taste alike. They don't. If you don't like the taste of black beans (for instance) that doesn't mean that you won't like red beans or pinto beans or black eye peas. If this bean doesn't suite your fancy, try a different bean.

Constantly be on the lookout for good bean recipes. I have an entire section of my homemade cookbook devoted to beans.

my homemade cookbook

what it looks like when you open the cover

the bean section

these are all bean recipes

Another suggestion is to make notes on your recipes the day you try them. That way, you can modify things you don't like, or serve that dish again, if it was wildly successful with your family.

Don't give up if your kids don't like the beans the first time. Keep trying. My kids all eat their beans now, but it was a process. I gave incentives (we call them "sticker meals") for a long time to get to that point. The idea was that for every time the kids would eat a meal I wanted to have rather than some sort of kid-friendly meal, they would get a sticker. When they got 10 stickers, I would buy them something worth $5.

You can branch out from regular beans even more if you purchase heirloom beans online. They have wildly varied tastes and unusual broths (my Grandma called it "the bean likker" --said in an extremely southern voice).

Some of my favorite flavors of heirloom dried beans are Good Mother Stallard beans, and Tiger Eye beans. I just recently purchased cranberry beans, Yellow Eye beans, Dapple Grey beans, and Pink beans from North Bay Trading. I haven't tasted any of them except for the Yellow Eye beans.

I have found North Bay Trading to be the cheapest option I have been able to find. (If you know of a cheaper one, please leave a comment for me.)

Another suggestion is to read The Rancho Gordo Heirloom Bean Grower's Guide: Steve Sando's 50 Favorite Varieties. I found it really loaded with helpful information and it made me want to try a bunch of new types of beans.

My favorite bean cookbook is Growing and Cooking Beans By John Withee.

My family has been eating and enjoying dried beans for 10 years now, but it was definitely a process. I hope this makes your process toward eating these wonderful beans easier.

****The views expressed here are entirely my own. I have not received any compensation from any of the links for this information. However, if you click through the Rancho Gordo link, I will receive a small (really small) compensation from Amazon.***

The Garden Right Now

I don't post as much as I used to.

I thought it would be nice to post a few pictures of the garden right now, though.

This is my front yard garden by the garage. This is also my favorite
garden. Currently, it has some red flowered fava beans, milkweed,
cardinal's cap, celosia, and nasturtiums in it. Along the trellis are
green beans, vining nasturtiums and passion vines. 

This is the Twenty Foot Garden. In front of the box, is Swiss Chard.
In the garden box itself, I have Ruth Bible beans and Lousiana
Purple Podded Pole beans, regular and cherry tomatoes, a
Tromboncino zucchini, 6 cucumbers, 24 okra in 3 varieties and
Mississippi Cream peas. 

This is the bed by the front door. I have Easter lilies coming up
everywhere, but they haven't bloomed yet this year. There is lemon
balm and thyme in the bed and the purple things are ornamental
cabbages. The bird bath on the ground is for butterflies. They use
wet sand to get their drinks and salt intake. 

Comparison of the Heirloom Beans I Grew 2012 Part 2

As I said in my previous post, this year I decided to grow several different types of heirloom beans. What I wanted was to find at least one bean that I loved enough to plant every year and save my own seeds.

I grew Scarlet Runner beans, Mississippi Cream peas, Pink Eye Purple Hull peas, Lazy Wife beans, Good Mother Stallard beans, Ruth Bible beans, Louisiana Purple Pod Pole beans and Trail of Tears beans.  I reviewed the Scarlet Runner beans, the Mississippi Cream peas, the Pink Eye Purple Hull peas, the Lazy Wife beans and the Ruth Bible beans in the previous post. 

Good Mother Stallard Beans for seed

Good Mother Stallard beans: These are common beans. They will cross with other common beans, but not with cowpeas or scarlet runner beans. By the time I got around to planting these beans I had grown weary of counting beans, so I only counted the number of seeds I saved. The harvest was not very large for the amount of beans I planted, but I did get enough beans for seed. for spring. I saved 187 beans for seed in spring.

With these beans I like the flavor so much that I threw out the productivity component. I plan to plant them in spring even though production was very low compared to the other varieties I tried. The leaf rollers and the bugs that eat the seeds did attack this planting much more heavily than any of the other beans I planted all year long. That may play into the low number.

According to a post on the Seed Savers Exchange forum, one should expect 120 beans per bean planted. I got substantially less than that. I planted 40 beans, and about 28 of them grew. If the expected harvest worked, I should have gotten something on the line of 3360 beans. I got 187.

I am going to plant them again in the spring in another location. I really like these beans and want to use them for dried beans. They have a rich, meaty flavor that is so good that I served my family beans and cornbread and that is all for supper when I was taste testing the beans. (I ordered several varieties from Rancho Gordo, because I wanted to taste beans to see if there was anything outstanding enough that I should plant it.)

I hope for a better return if I plant them in another location. I have to have about 800 seeds to make a pound of Good Mother Stallard beans. I don't know if I will be able to get what I need to have meals of these beans or not. I guess if worst comes to worst, I can order them from Rancho Gordo.  I hope to work it out so that I can grow my own.

Lousiana Purple Podded Pole beans

Louisiana Purple Podded Pole bean flowers-- a stunning two-
tone purple 

Louisiana Purple Podded Pole Beans: These are common beans. They won't cross with cowpeas, or  runner beans, but they will cross with any other common bean. These were the last beans I planted this year. I planted them on a whim, because I had just purchased the seed and was excited to see how they grow. I planted them so late that I am sure I didn't get a good reading on productivity.

I didn't bother to count the beans of this variety, either. I did get to taste them. They are wonderful. They are also exceptionally beautiful. The stems are a deep, stunning purple. The leaves are bright green. The flowers are a gorgeous two-tone purple. Surprisingly, the flowers have a scent, a wonderful flowery aroma. They would be a great addition to a front yard garden, where they would work great as edible landscaping. They are vining plants, so you would need a trellis, but that can be done tastefully.

I planted 40 of them and about 20 grew. I was able to save a little bit of seed from my own garden and have some seed left over from that I purchased from Seed Savers Exchange. I definitely plan to have these in my garden next year. I love the color. I love the taste. I love the flowers, and the form of the plants. I love that the flowers have a scent. They are rather rare, so it will be a pleasure to help maintain a variety that is threatened. I hope to have a bigger planting next year.

Summary: I learned what type of beans my family likes and what types produce the best for us. The best producer was by far the Ruth Bible beans. The best tasting green bean for our family was the Louisiana Purple Podded Pole beans. The whole family agreed that their flavor was superior to the others. The best story definitely came from the Mississippi Cream peas. The most unique flavor was the taste of the Good Mother Stallard beans. 

So, next spring's bean choices are made. I will plant Ruth Bible beans, Louisiana Purple Podded Pole beans, Mississippi Cream peas and Good Mother Stallard beans. Now to organize my garden so that each bean is isolated enough to give me pure seed. 

Comparison of the Heirloom Beans I Grew 2012 Part 1

This year I decided to grow several different types of heirloom beans. What I wanted was to find at least one bean that I loved enough to plant every year and save my own seeds.

I grew Scarlet Runner beans, Mississippi Cream peas, Pink Eye Purple Hull peas, Lazy Wife beans, Good Mother Stallard beans, Ruth Bible beans, Louisiana Purple Pod Pole beans and Trail of Tears beans.

I am going to leave the Trail of Tears beans out of my evaluations, because I had to pull them and didn't get a good read of how they grow.

This will be divided into two posts so that the posts are not so long.

Scarlet Runner bean flower in my front yard

Scarlet Runner beans: These grow better in cooler soil than any of the other beans I planted. Biologically, they are not the same (and therefore won't cross) with common beans. I planted them early, because it warms so fast in the spring around here.

They grew really well in my yard, and made beautiful flowers. They attracted hummingbirds. They weren't bothered by any pests. My family and I just didn't like the taste. If I were growing these for their beauty only, I would grow them every year. But I am not. I am trying for beans we can eat. We were completely turned off by the taste.

Okra on the left, with Mississippi Cream peas and one
little Pink Eye Purple Hull pea (the one purple one). 

Mississippi Cream peas:  These peas like it HOT. The hotter the weather the better they like it. These plants are not going to do well until the soil is properly warmed, so wait until after all threat of frost is past to plant them.  They are not in the same family (and therefore, won't cross) with common beans. They grow in long, trailing vines. In my garden, they were very aggressive, running over other plants in their eager pursuit of sunshine.

They grew very well in my garden. I loved the way they took over everything in their path. My whole family enjoyed the taste. I found out after planting them that they are an heirloom of my husband's family.  We never tried them this way, because I only found out that you can eat the pods after the season was over, but they supposedly make great green beans, too.

I cannot praise these peas enough. We will definitely grow them again and I plan to devote much more space in the garden to these beauties.

From 40 plants, I harvested 413 pods.

Pink Eye Purple Hull peas (see the picture above):  These are in the same family as the Mississippi Cream peas. They will cross with Mississippi Cream peas, but not with common beans. They grow as little bushy plants, sometimes throwing off a runner or two. These are a staple in the Southern US. I have eaten them all my life. They are available everywhere in the summer time.

I didn't enjoy growing these very much. The plants didn't do very well for me. They were covered in aphids. The fact that they grew in bushes rather than vines means that I would have to have more space to be able to get a proper harvest. The purple pods are really striking, but none of the purple pods got as long in my garden as the Mississippi Cream peas.

We will not be planting these next year. I am going to devote all that space to the Mississippi Cream peas.

Out of 100 plants we harvested 100 pods.

Left to right: Lazy Wife Beans, Ruth Bible Beans and Trail of Tears
Beans

Lazy Wife beans (also called Lazy Housewife beans): These are common beans. They will cross with any other common bean variety, but not with runner beans or cowpeas. I planted these because I liked the name and the story behind them. They were described as heavily producing beans and completely stringless. These beans are supposed to be the wide and flat variety, not the ones like haricot verts.

The bean seed I bought must have been contaminated somehow, because the beans had strings. I don't have a scale, but I carefully counted each bean pod we brought into the house in order to try to get a good idea how much production we were getting from different types of beans.

Of the beans I planted, I ended up with 35 plants. I harvested 596 pods. They were in the garden the same amount of time as the Ruth Bible beans and yet they didn't produce as many pods as the Ruth Bible beans.

Ruth Bible beans: (see the picture above, center bean)  These are common beans. They will cross with any other common beans, but not with runner beans or cowpeas. I planted these because I like the name. They are becoming very scarce.

These beans produced like "a house afire"! Oh my. They outproduced everything in my garden this year. I stared out eating them as green beans, and they have the old fashioned green bean flavor when cooked that way. I didn't like stringing the beans, and they produced so much that I had a hard time keeping up with the green bean picking, so I started eating them as "shelly" beans. Our family enjoyed the flavor much better that way.

As for numbers, they were in the ground the same amount of time as the Lazy Wife beans. I had 20 plants that grew. I harvested 901 pods. Yes. That is right. If you look at the number of plants I had in the ground, I harvested more pods off of less plants with the Ruth Bible beans. This is important for my family, because we have only a small plot of ground to work. If I can get 901 pods off of 20 plants, and only 596 pods off of 35 plants, I am going to choose the one that I can harvest more for less plants.

Beans for Spring Planting

Good Mother Stallard beans saved for seed

Well, I have pulled most of the Good Mother Stallard bean plants from the garden. The ones that remain are really dead. I just haven't untangled them from the invisible trellis.

I didn't have as good a harvest as I would have liked, but I have tasted the beans (because I ordered and ate some from Rancho Gordo). I know that I want them in the garden, so I saved every single bean that the garden produced.

I ended up with about 170 seeds. That should be enough to plant a good many in the spring and still have some seed set aside. (Seed Savers Exchange always advises their members to save some of their seed in case something happens to the ones they have planted. You don't want to have a rare heirloom seed and lose it all.)

Flowers and Passion Fruit

We have had about 2 inches of rain since I reported the inch of rain on Monday. Praise the Lord!

Everything is perking right up after that wonderful rain.

My kids have seen the hummingbirds more than I have. They have seen them 4 or 5 times. I was worried about pollination on the Scarlet Runners, because I haven't seen many bees, either, yet this year. In several places, the places where there were flowers now look like this. Just a nub.

But today I found this.

Do you see those 2 little baby beans right in the center of the picture? I have several more that look like that. So I am hopeful that we will get to eat some scarlet runner beans. (We plan to use them as shelly beans, because I had heard they taste similar to butterbeans and my crew likes those pretty well.)

In the Twenty Foot Garden, I have been watching my green beans. Today I saw the first flowers. Yea. We may be eating fresh organic green beans soon.

Then, just after I lay my youngest down for her afternoon nap, I got a call. "Do you think I could stop by?" Dot Dot wanted to know. "Sure. Come on," I said. 

She came and brought me red passion fruit vines! Woot! Woot!

Now to just get these planted. 

And here are the purple ones she gave me a couple weeks ago.
They still look weak, but they still seem to be hanging in there.
The rain does seem to have perked them up some. 

It is great to have friends willing to share pass-along plants with you. :) 

Heirloom Bean Seeds

I thought you might be interested in the beautiful heirloom beans I have purchased and obtained from Daphne at Daphne's Dandelions for my spring garden. 

I think they are amazing and so individual. I love the names, too!