Prepper Pantry: How to Cook Dried Beans

dry beans are a foundational item in a Preppers pantry do you know the secret to turning these into delicious nutritious meals hi I'm Sam and I'm a Provident prepper the pandemic is changing our lives I've been in Alaska but the crazy world that we live in has required that I come back to my home with my family I'm currently under a 14-day quarantine we've eaten well because my mom knows how to make the best out of basics such as dry beans from our food storage in this video my mom is going to teach you how to make those same delicious nutritious meals out of those dry beans from your food storage check it out a worldwide pandemic has affected almost every aspect of our life once we were able to go out to restaurants and socialize with each other and that lifestyle is no longer available to us the fresh foods in our refrigerator and pantries are starting to be diminished many of us are looking for creative ways to use the staples that we have in our pantry to create the wonderful restaurant meals that we used to be able to enjoy and in this quick video today I'm going to show you how to make delicious meals from the dried beans that you have in your storage I hear so many people say that cooking dry beans is complicated and they just don't know how to do it and it's so not true cooking dry beans is incredibly simple and I'm gonna teach you exactly how to do it the first thing that you want to do is sort through your dry beans dry beans may have little dirt clods or rocks or broken beans things that you wouldn't want to eat that can't be mechanically sorted during the process and so it's really good just to lay out those beans and look through them and remove anything that you don't want to eat the next step is to rinse the beans really well because they were grown outside and they will be covered with dirt rinse them really well and cover them with about three inches of water and let them soak overnight sometimes really old beans have a hard time softening up in the cooking process if you are cooking with really old beans it can be helpful to add a teaspoon of baking soda to that soaking water basic important tips about cooking with dry beans the first tip is that you should discard your soaking water if you cook beans in fresh water it tends to reduce the gas that is produced during digestion of the beans and since our family is all confined into the home together we would appreciate as little guests as possible another important tip is that you should add salt sugar or acidic foods like tomatoes after the beans are already tender if you add them at the beginning sometimes those beans just will never shoppin up and then if you add a tablespoon or two of oil or fat it will reduce the foaming that occurs in this photo you can see that I've put those black-eyed peas into a slow cooker to begin the process but I put a ham hock in right at the beginning that does not affect the way that the beans soften up but it creates a really flavorful broth I am a huge fan of cooking in a slow cooker however pressure cooking beans is an incredible way to accomplish it if you pressure cook your beans soaking is optional you can or you don't have to I usually do anyway but if I'm in a hurry and that's what choice I have I'll use my pressure cooker it reduces cooking time significantly and pressure cooking will soften old hard beans that will never get soft in a slow cooker when I cook beans in the pressure cooker I completely cover them with water with about two to three inches of water on top of the beans and then I like to add just a little bit of oil or fat so that it doesn't foam as much inside the pressure cooker once those beans are tender then it's time to add the other ingredients and simmer until all the flavors are blended salt is a basic ingredient that will change bland beans into something flavorful and delicious so if you have nothing else besides beans water and salt you can totally make them edible and delicious there are basic aromatics that will just make the flavor of beans pop and my favorites are onions and garlic I like to sautee them in a little bit of fat before I add them to my beans as I mentioned at the beginning of this video a lot of us are starting to have holes in our pantry and we might not have all of the ingredients that we would like to have in order to make our favorite recipes just because you don't have an ingredient that your original recipe called for doesn't mean that you can't make that recipe and that it will be delicious think about this you can use fresh frozen canned dried and freeze dried so when we talk about the aromatics especially like the onions in the garlic well yeah I can use fresh onions and that's my favorite but I always keep dehydrated onions and if I add those dehydrated onions to my beans it still provides a great flavor and the same thing goes with spices I love to use fresh spices in a lot of my recipes however dried spices work just fine and if you are out of one spice be brave let's try another see what you can create using what you still have in your pantry and you can use a variety of fats a lot of recipes will call for the onions to be sautéed in bacon grease because the bacon and the Pinto just creates this really delicious flavor together however you can use olive oil or vegetable oil or any kind of fat that you have to do that same thing the flavors gonna change just a little bit but that's really ok if you don't have me leave it out of the recipe altogether many of these recipes are delicious in a vegetarian version if you're using raw meat I really like to brown it before I add it to the dish if I'm using canned meat I'll wait until the beans are tender when I'm adding all the spices and things and just gonna let it simmer and that's when I would add my canned chicken so that it maintains the texture it's okay to be creative and substitute different items or even omit one completely if you don't have that item in your pantry one of our very favorite staple bean recipes is just refried beans and quite frankly all you need is pinto beans and salt if I'm wanting to keep the meal low-fat I will just take an immersion blender and blend the pinto beans until they just have some really cool texture and put some salt in them and call it good however refried beans are really good and after the beans are tender you put a little bit of fat or oil inside of a pan and kind of use a wooden spoon and smash them against the side refried beans could be a great option when your pantry is getting low as long as you have pinto beans and salt another favorite in our family is a Chevy's copycat pinto bean recipe it's a very basic tasty bean recipe will serve this recipe just as a bowl of beans or sometimes I'll take an immersion blender and I'll blend it up a little bit and we'll use it in place of refried beans in it it's just a really flavorful recipe so the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to take those pinto beans and I am going to cook them till they're tender and then I'll chop up some pieces of bacon or I'll just use oil and I'll saute the onion and garlic and then put it in with those pinto beans a can of chopped green chilies a tablespoon of chili powder 2 teaspoons of cumin and a tablespoon of salt and then just simmer until those flavors blend and it really is incredibly delicious just using very basics and I have substituted garlic salt in this recipe when I don't have cloves of garlic and reduce the amount of salt that I put in and I have used dehydrated onions and dehydrated peppers there our son Rob is famous for his burrito bowls he likes to just make black beans with salt he uses the insta pot usually and then we serve the black beans over cooked brown rice in the big picture you see it we have Pico sauce and guacamole and it's just to die for however you can eat it just plain beans and rice or put salsa on top or anything that you want but this is the basic it will feed you it will fill your belly and it is a good protein another option is southern black-eyed peas if you don't have a ham hock to make the peas with you can actually just use a little bit of bacon or you could omit that altogether if I'm using a ham hock I will put the ham hock in with the water and dry beans and let that cook until they're tender and then I'll add the remaining ingredients once it's all simmered together I'll take out that ham hock and pull the remaining meat off of it and serve it and if you note the rice that we served with this actually had greens in it so that it was a southern style this is Jonathan's favorite Wendy's copycat chili we found this recipe years ago and then we have adapted it until it's absolutely perfect for our family I soaked the pinto in the kidney beans overnight and then I cook them till they're tender in this recipe then I drain that liquid off sometimes I will use hamburger in this recipe sometimes it's to me I've even been known to just throw a small roast in but whatever I'm using I Brown it and with the onion and then I put it in the the chili along with all of the remaining ingredients the day that I did the roast after it is simmered for a while and all those flavors were blended then I took that roast out and cut it all up and returned it to the pan whatever you have to use we've also used canned beef with this and added it toward the end when everything was simmering emily is always known for serving the most delicious foods and there are lots of different recipes for white chili out there but this one is a basic one that really works well you take your white beans you soak them overnight you add water and you cook them till they're tender then you take the chicken and brown it with the onion and garlic in the oil add the can of corn with the juice you don't want to waste that juice and the green chilies the bouillon cubes then you're gonna salt it to taste this recipe calls for 1 to 2 cups of shredded pepper jack cheese oh it's yummy and you just put it in there like 15 minutes before you serve it and stir it until it's all melted and delicious it's really creamy but if you don't have that you can just leave it out it won't be as creamy but it will still be a really good pot of white chili this is a we can't recipe for cafe real black beans over lime rice it's super easy you soak your black beans and then you cook them till they're tender take the onion and saute it add the garlic and finish sauteing it I only like to saute that garlic for about a minute or else it'll go bitter but I like to saute the onion for a lot longer so I do that first and then I add that garlic just about a minute before it's done now with this one you want to drain all of the liquid off of those black beans and return it to your slow cooker and then you're going to add all of the other ingredients but the tomato juice will be your liquid if you leave the cooking water in it's just too liquidy if you don't have cilantro you can just omit it if you hate cilantro you can omit it too and then it's served over lime rice which is really easy to make it's just white rice with lime juice and cilantro and salt it's also really good if you use like a chicken bullion base to it but that's not at all necessary and you can adapt this any way you need to so that you have the right ingredients this is pinto bean chicken chili you follow that same format you soak the pinto beans then you cook them till they're tender you're gonna Brown your chicken I love to use a Creole seasoning when I'm browning the chicken it makes it taste really yummy and then you just add all of these other ingredients and simmer it and it turns out to be something spectacular remember this is so easy you can totally do that if you've been afraid of that can of black beans that you have in your food storage it's time to not be afraid anymore and create something delicious out of it the steps are easy you're gonna sort it make sure that there's no rocks or anything nasty you're gonna rinse it you're gonna soak it overnight and then you're going to cook those beans until tender if you want it can be in a slow cooker it can be on the stovetop it can be in a pressure cooker just cook them till they're tender and if it has too much water after cooking you might want to remove some of that add all of your other ingredients and continue simmering until it's perfect the pandemic has really brought home the need for us to have food storage at home and beans are part of our long-term food supply if you want to learn more how to build a long-term food supply visit the Provident prepper long-term food storage creative solutions to build the critical asset and we created a video just a few days ago empty pantry soup tips that teach you how to make soup out of whatever it is that you have left in your pantry and then there's a video you might be interested in survival food storage the closure of restaurants obviously hasn't affected our family very much you too can work miracles with the power of dry beans now for the question of the day what are your favorite recipes to use with dry beans comment them below thanks for being part of the solution [Music]

Channel: The Provident Prepper

Views: 7,970

Rating: 4.957983 out of 5

Keywords: The Provident Prepper, SHTF, TEOTWAWKI, Prepper, Dry Beans, Cooking Food Storage, How to Cook Dried Beans, Basic Shelf Stable Foods

Id: TQYpP3O16HU

Length: 14min 8sec (848 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 30 2020