Dry Bean Food Storage Myth – Actual Shelf-Life Revealed

dry beans are an important staple in our food storage program there are rumors on the internet that beans won't soften if they're five or seven years old let's see if that rumor is true hey i'm jonathan and kyleene jones and we are the provident preppers i have been cooking and storing dry beans for many years and recently my friend jersey informed me that there's a rumor circulating that dry beans that are five to seven years old will not soften and cook up into an edible state no matter how long you cook them this was quite interesting to me so in this video we're going to cook up some beans that are 18 years old watch the video and you tell me will 18 year old beans cook up and are they edible we'll see so today we are going to tackle the rumors that are circulating that dry beans will not soften up after five to seven years and i'd like to thank jersey my friend for bringing this to my attention he said that what he has heard on line is that pinto beans are nearly impossible to cook or eat after five to seven years of storage they become so hard that no amount of cooking or pre-soaking can soften them to an easily edible state i took this challenge this is for you jersey we took two cans of pinto beans that we had in our own personal food storage that were dated december 2002 which would make them about 18 years old when we first opened up the two cans of dry beans we noticed a sweet metallic smell that is very typical of foods that you have stored in number 10 cans so i'm not at all concerned about that if you look at the beans right now you can see that the quality of the beans looks really pretty good for being 18 years old before we did anything else we sorted the beans which means that you take out the broken beans or discolored beans or some of the rocks or little pebbles that you might find in there so that you've got a clean good supply of beans to start with and then i rinsed the beans really well and covered them in bowls with water you'll need to add at least three inches of water above the beans because the beans will at least double when they are soaked it is interesting to note that those two number 10 cans held 100 servings of beans that's one of the reasons why beans are such a good storage food because you've got a lot of food packed into a very small amount of space and then i add one teaspoon of baking soda to each one of the soaking bowls baking soda does a really good job of helping to soften those old beans so that is one trick you're going to want to remember normally i allow my dry beans to soak overnight but i wanted to accomplish all of this within one day and so i only let the beans soak for about four hours but you can see that they have just about doubled in size the first thing you want to do is pour off that soaking water it helps to actually reduce gas so in our family i make sure i always dump off that soaking water you don't have to i just feel like it produces a better product so i always dump that soaking water off and then i cover it with another three inches of fresh water and i put a little bit of olive oil in or any kind of fat will work but that just helps to reduce the foaming now an instant pot is one of my very favorite ways to cook dry beans because it just makes it incredibly easy you just push the button that says bean and chili and it cooks and does all the work itself for those of you that don't know an instant pot is an electric pressure cooker if you check out the description of this video i will put a link to it but it is definitely one of my favorite tools for cooking food storage in my kitchen the next method we used for cooking the beans is in a stainless steel stovetop pressure cooker this could be used outside of in an open fire like on a rocket stove or on a propane stove i just happen to use it on my my stovetop but pressure cooking does a great job when it comes to cooking dry beans we cooked another batch in a slow cooker set to high and we cooked another batch in a dutch oven on our propane camp chef on our back patio and our last method was a form of retained heat cooking sometimes during a crisis fuel will be very limited and it becomes precious and by using retained heat you can cook more using less fuel in this thermal cooker i just put the beans and some water and a little bit of oil and brought them to a boil on the stovetop and then i transferred that pot to the insulated container and then i always like to add an extra towel or baby blanket or something to the outside to increase the amount of insulation this method takes about four times as long to cook but it also uses significantly less fuel if you click the card in the corner it will take you to an article that we have written on retained heat cooking that explains this process a little bit better now let's talk about tips for success because when jersey told me that this was out there my first impression was oh they just don't know how to cook beans because it's really easy if you do understand how to cook them so let's review some tips it's important to take time to prepare the beans before cooking soak them before cooking and i add a teaspoon of baking soda to that cooking water in my opinion pressure cooking the beans is ideal i really prefer the texture of the beans when they are pressure cooked don't add any salt or any acid like tomatoes until the beans are completely soft so you cook the beans and once they're soft then you turn them into whatever delightful recipe you want to but don't do that at the beginning wait until those beans are soft so we cooked it five different ways and now the results of our experiment the instant pot was the fastest and those beans came out perfectly soft very very nice the stovetop pressure cooker took about the same amount of time and again they came out just very nice very nice and soft by definition the slow cooker took longer it cooked for most of the day but again they turned out very good and they were soft the dutch oven also softened the beans very nicely it took a little longer than the pressure cooker but not significantly and that's something that kind of is a toss-up because the pressure cooker if you pressure cook them it doesn't take very long 10 or 15 minutes but then they work a lot better if you allow that pressure to naturally release which can take 45 minutes an hour-ish by the time you measure both out they're very similar however i still like the texture of the beans better when they're pressure cooked the thermal cooker would be the one that we would be most concerned about but again they turned out just right nice and soft it took longer much longer right right much longer but that's just the nature of it it used a lot less energy why should you store dry beans and legumes in your food storage we are huge advocates of storing beans the first reason is because they contain foundational calories for your diet they are a nutritional powerhouse they are a good source of protein and quite frankly they're easy to cook even when people talk about how they can't soften up really if you just understand the basic principles you can cook them and they are so simple to cook dry beans have a very long shelf life if you store them correctly up to 25 to 30 years if you click the card in the corner it'll take you to the article that we have written to go with this video and it will tell you the actual shelf life of all the different methods of storing dry beans so how long they'll really store in buckets or glass jars or in number 10 cans dry beans are inexpensive you can feed a lot of people for a very small amount of money each one of those number 10 cans that we opened we only paid a little bit over five dollars for them so now maybe you're gonna pay seven dollars but to be able to feed 100 people for 14 that's some pretty cheap food also compact we talked about this there were 100 servings in those number 10 cans so that's a lot of food in a very small place and then there's such a wide variety of beans and legumes you've got black beans and pinto beans and red beans and white beans and yellow beans and split peas and lentils and all kinds of different things that you can store and eat how you store those beans makes a huge difference in that outcome those beans that we stored in those number 10 cans were stored in a cool dry basement if you look at this photo the beans in the center and the beans on the right were bought at the same place at the same time my sister and i before y2k both went out and bought these buckets of beans at the same location the difference was how they were stored i was blessed to have a basement storage area where they were kept cool at a constant temperature my sister's home did not have a basement and so for many years hers were stored in her garage and then for the last year or so they were actually stored on the side of her house where they were exposed to light there's a significant difference in the quality of those beans due to the storage conditions the beans on the left were stored in a number 10 can in a basement for 14 years they were a slightly higher quality than what were stored in the bucket but very similar now my sister and i these are a picture of the beans after they were cooked they were pressure cooked and both of them softened up very nicely the beans on the left were the pinto beans that were stored in our basement the beans on the right were those that were stored in sub-optimal storage conditions they were bitter to the taste and the texture was funky i would say that they were not edible john disagrees with me if i was really really hungry i would eat them they weren't real good i tasted them but certainly if you have the ability to store them well it's going to pay off for you yes much much better store your stuff right if do the very very best that you can and rotate them because man i want to eat those beans on the left i'm gonna skip dinner if i have to eat the beans on the right so to answer jersey's question are beans edible after five to seven years of storage absolutely the beans in this bowl were cooked on the propane camp chef out on the back patio in that dutch oven i blended them and added a little bit of salt and they are absolutely delicious now the fresh tomatoes and chives and the garden helped that out a little bit but definitely edible these are the beans that were cooked in the instant pot once they were soft i poured off some of the liquid added all the different ingredients for my chili recipe and allowed them to slow cook for a while in that instant pot and a few hours later we had some amazing chili yes 18 year old beans yes delicious so the bad bean myth has been debunked for more details and other great information check out the provident prepper dry bean food storage myth actual shelf life revealed also on our youtube channel how to cook dry beans this is a great video to help you take basic beans and turn them into amazing foods also enemies to your food storage this video discusses the enemies that will shorten the shelf life of your food and the things that you can do to prevent that from happening check them out sometimes you just need a little bit of knowledge to be able to successfully store and use food storage i want to give a big shout out to my friend jersey who asked the question so that we could all find out the answer and now for the question of the day what is your favorite way to cook dry pinto beans comment below and thanks for being part of the solution [Music] you

Channel: The Provident Prepper

Views: 77,402

Rating: 4.962996 out of 5

Keywords: Cooking Dry Beans, Storing Beans, Food Storage Dry Beans, SHTF, TEOTWAWKI, Prepper, The Provident Prepper, Food Storage Myth, Food Storage Rumor, Beans and Rice

Id: HkCDX59Z9Qw

Length: 12min 48sec (768 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 17 2020