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Beans from dry — photos at every stage

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For anyone who has been cooking from canned beans and wants to understand what they are missing, here is the full process with photos. Stage 1 (raw dried pinto beans): small, firm, fully dry. Colour: light tan. Stage 2 (soaked overnight): swollen to double size, skin slightly looser. Stage 3 (after one hour cooking): beginning to soften, broth still pale. Stage 4 (after two hours): the broth has darkened significantly. The first beans are beginning to split. Stage 5 (done): full softness, broth is dark and deeply flavoured. The smell at this stage is the best smell in my kitchen. The broth in stage 5 is the ingredient you are throwing away when you use canned beans.

T

the_bean_broth

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Stage 4 to 5 broth transformation is the most important visual in this series. The pale broth in stage 3 and the dark, thick broth in stage 5 are not the same ingredient. What happens between those two stages is the entire argument for cooking from dried.

C

cooked_from_dry

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The smell at stage 5 is the thing nobody documents because it is not photographable. It is the most specifically satisfying smell in my kitchen too — earthy, slightly vegetal, deeply warm. If you have never cooked from dried you do not know it exists.

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