Some Observations about Beans and Greens (no more Pollan, I promise!)

[walkitout]

In my foray into Bean World over the last few weeks, I've been cooking a lot of beans. I've tried a variety of strategies: overnight soak, several hour soak, quick soak (boil and then let it sit), microwave soak (R.'s invention) (okay, I lied: Pollan says if you sign up for a CSA, there won't be anything microwaveable. Moron. Okay, moving on. Really!), no soak. Cook it with the lid on, the lid off, in the slow cooker, in the oven. We bought a pressure cooker, but then heard that Sally Fallon thing about pressure cooking is teh evil, and so haven't used it yet. When the day comes when it's pressure cooker or beans from a can, I'm informed enough to know that _all canned beans have been through a pressure cooker already_ and will use my own.

I've cooked beans with nothing, epazote, kombu. I don't tend to salt beans, but the baked beans did have molasses and etc. in them.

I've rinsed once, rinsed more than once, and cooked in the soak water. And here are my conclusions about beans and teh flatulence:

(1) Cook the heck out of those beans. If there is any al dente left, virtually nothing will save you from the fartage.

(2) Eat beans freqently.

Nothing else seems to matter as much as those two. Kombu and epazote seem to help somewhere, but those are what really matter.

I've been noticing that my usual affection for greens (fresh herbs such as basil, thyme, cilantro, parsley, etc., and Leafy Greens such as chard, kale, etc.) has increased -- especially for the herbs. It seems like every new bean dish I make, I find a way to incorporate more and more herbs, and it seems more and more important to serve greens as a side. I'd been wondering about this, and, in parallel, trying to figure out a reasonable fatty acids strategy as well, since there was a consensus that vegetarians often wind up with a more extreme omega-6/omega-3 ratio than Standard American diet. Lo and behold, Pollan offered up an in passing summary that perfectly captures what I had been laboriously cobbling together: the omega-6s are in the seeds and the omega-3s are in the leaves.

Gotta have both -- eat your greens with your beans (and grains).

Comments

Pressure Cooker and Beans

[(Anonymous)]

I am so curious about what Sally Fallon says about pressure cooking and why it's so bad. I use it and teach it and generally it helps people improve their eating and they can forget about the microwave. You can email me at jill@pressurecookingonline.com. Thanks.

Re: Pressure Cooker and Beans

[walkitout]

This is what I e-mailed to Jill:

I am sorry to say I cannot give you much in the way of
detail re: Sally Fallon and pressure cooking. Sally Fallon
is the author of _Nourishing Traditions_ and owner (?) of
the Weston Price foundation. She's all about the low-and-slow
cooking, and fermentation. She's also all about dairy products,
which I am allergic to, so I don't have much to do with her,
altho one of my friends does and I see Fallon's ideas becoming more
and more popular around me.

The summary from my friend was that pressure cooking cooks
things too quickly. Browsing the web suggests the issue
might revolve around the effects of high-heat on food and
micronutrients.

I am actually not too concerned about it, but have had good
success with soaking beans and cooking them on the stove in
terms of my-time involved in food prep (elapsed time is large,
but I can plan ahead, and increasingly I keep cooked beans
in the fridge to include in dishes when I want them). I
do recognize that pressure cooking in general makes beans
a much more readily available meal-choice for most people.

[(Anonymous)]

In my experience, eating beans with rice and yogurt helps (not that the yogurt advice does you much good, but maybe acidophilus would do something?). Mediterranean or Indian meals including that combination have never bothered me half as much as the traditional baked-beans-and-hotdogs kind of dinner. Never had much luck with Beano.

Helen S.