Crockpot week and a lesson in prepping beans

One of my favorite kitchen appliances is the crockpot. I have five of them in various sizes. They all get a workout, too. I frequently pull out the larger ones and make vegetable stock and refried beans in them. This week I am going beyond stock and refritos. It's going to be a busy week for me, so coming home to dinner already made in the crockpot at the end of the day will be wonderful. Every day this week I am going to make something in my crockpot (except for Friday - that's pizza and movie night). I'm not sure what everything will be just yet, but many of my recipes will most likely come from Fresh From the Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson. It has been a great resource for me over the years. It is one of the most used books on my shelf.

Tonight, I have beans soaking for my Many Bean Soup and pinto beans soaking for refritos. It isn't necessary to soak your beans before cooking them, but doing so makes me feel like I'm doing something useful. I do think that it helps to reduce the gassiness of the beans, soaking them with a thumb-sized piece of kombu and then rinsing them before cooking. I use the kombu in the soup, too. After soaking I mince it up and add it to the pot. This imparts flavor as well as reducing the beans musical properties and infuses them with minerals and improves digestibilty. What a way to bump up the nutritional value of your food. So add some seaweed to your beans today!Prepping your beans

My brother asked me one day what purpose sorting the beans served. Well, there are oftentimes little rocks/pebbles in them. And not all of the beans are suited to eat, with some of them being shriveled or broken or just unrecognizable as a bean. My husband asked why I wash them. Why??? They are filthy! Absolutely the dirtiest little things! To wash your beans, put them into a bowl and run cool water over them, swishing them the entire time. The water will be so dirty. Don't pour the water out of the bowl. Scoop the beans out with a slotted spoon or your hands (which is what I use). This leaves the dirt and sediment on the bottom of the bowl and prevents you from mixing it back up into the beans. Now dump the water out of the bowl and rinse it. Add your beans back to it and repeat this process. You'll probably need to do this at least three times to get your beans good and clean.

Sounds like a lot of work, but it really isn't. And when you consider that a pound of dried beans yields about the equivalent of four-six cans of beans (depending of the bean) for what one or two cans will cost you, then it's worth extra effort. Not only that, when you prepare your own beans you know what has gone into them. You can choose if you want them salted or not or whether or not you want to use kombu. And beans cooked from dried just taste better. Cheaper and taste better - that's the ticket. Soon I will provide lessons in pressure cooking your beans, which is my method of choice for cooking beans to be used in recipes that require cooked beans.