The Flavorful Economy of Cooking Dried Beans

Canned beans are one of the best pantry staples to have on hand, no question. But dried beans are so inexpensive, available in so many varieties, and cooking them is such an easy, almost inactive process that they’re great to incorporate into your home cooking repertoire.

If you can remember to soak the beans overnight in plenty of cold water, they should only take a couple of hours at most to cook the next day, depending on what kind of bean you’re using. And if you cook the beans with a little smoked meat — a ham hock or my favorite, smoked turkey breast — and some chopped vegetables and herbs, the cooking liquid becomes a flavorful foundation broth to use in just about anything, from pastas to soups to stews. And you get the smoked meat too.

It doesn’t take much to get a lot of flavor into beans and broth, especially if you add smoked meat. When you’re ready to cook soaked beans, just pour off the soaking liquid and rinse the beans, generously cover them in a heavy pot with cold water, add the flavorings, simmer until the beans start to turn soft, season to taste with salt about halfway through cooking, and simmer until the beans are just tender but not falling apart.

Here’s a basic bean-flavoring formula to keep in mind:

beans + water + smoked meat + roughly chopped vegetables + fresh herbs + chile / pepper + salt  = beans + broth + smoked meat

Here are a few specific combinations that work well, and the dishes they can yield:

white beans + water + smoked turkey breast + half an onion + 2 bay leaves + pinch red pepper flakes = cooked white beans+ moist flavorful smoked turkey + smoky turkey bean broth

The white beans can be used to make a white bean soup, white bean dip, pasta with white beans and sausage, white beans in tomato sauce, lamb with white beans, white bean and fennel salad, white bean salad with parsley . . .

The broth can be used to make a soup, a risotto, a pasta sauce, a flavorful poaching liquid for chicken or fish . . .

The smoked turkey breast can be sliced in sandwiches, in a burrito, shredded in soup, a burrito, tacos . . .

Here’s another combination:

black beans + water + half an onion + whole peeled garlic cloves + smoked ham hock + dried ancho chile + fresh oregano = Spanish / Cuban-flavored black beans + smoky ham + spicy smoky pork broth

The black beans can be served over rice, in a quesadilla, burrito or taco, in a black bean dip, in chili . . .

The ham hock can be shredded in a soup, sliced and served with the beans and rice, cooked with cabbage, chopped into a pasta sauce . . .

The pork broth can be used as cooking liquid for rice, as a base for any soup or sauce . . . or you can just serve the black beans, shredded ham and broth together as a soup.

If you’re looking for an unbelievably comprehensive guide to everything about cooking beans, pick up Aliza Green’s book Beans: More than 200 Delicious, Wholesome Recipes from Around the World.