What is a cookbook without handy dandy tips and tricks? In between posting my recipes I will try to share some of my time saving tricks I’ve either learned or developed on my own. Here is the first one. I hope they help you in your cooking adventures.

Being mostly vegetarian and having to watch our budget has lead us to eat a lot of bean dishes. The cheapest beans are the dried ones but they take a bit of work to prepare. So through time and patience I have come up with a few ways to make your bean making days less time consuming.

Freezing beans:

Soaking beans for 48 hours has always given me the best results, but having to plan a last minute meal and only having dried beans on hand makes this an undesirable option. You can soak your beans for 48 hours changing the water after 24 hours then freeze in Ziploc freezer bags. You will find after these beans have been soaked and frozen they will cook up in half the time if you were to just soak them.

Tip: look through your favorite bean recipes and find out the average measurement of beans they require, then individually freeze that amount of beans.

Meal in a bag:

Why not put your presorted beans and vegetables in one bag for a recipe? In most cases the only vegetable for soups that you don’t want to add to the mix right away is fresh garlic because the longer you cook it the less flavor keeps. So pick your favorite bean soup, or casserole recipe and add all the ingredients that would be included in the first cycle of your recipe and throw them all in a freezer bag with your pre-soaked beans, then freeze them until you are ready for it.

Tip: Be sure to mark the bags with the date and what the ingredients are for to avoid having a freezer full of mystery.

Add a little flavor:

Dried beans soak up a lot of the pre-soak water (but you already knew that), so why not flavor the water by either adding bouillon, chopped onions, garlic, or spices of your choice. You will find in the end a much more flavor packed bean.

Feel free to share your tips or comments.