Canned Beans, Dried Beans

(Dried beans are rich in folate, iron, and fiber, plus are good anti-oxidants. What about canned? And can/should you can your own? Plus how to can them.
Originally published at http://c-e-whitehead.suite101.com/canned-beans-dried-beans-a391028)


Freshly shelled peas or beans – snap peas, straight from the garden, served in a salad, or lima (or the slightly "meatier" fava) beans, simmered and served with fresh corn or rice – can't be beat. But cooked dried beans have high quality nutrients too, including lots of folate, fiber, and even iron. Dried beans, after all, are "living food," and quite fresh: if soaked long enough, they will sprout (at which point of course they are probably not edible). What about canned beans then?

Fiber, Minerals, Folate, and Anti-oxidants

Canned beans may have perhaps sixty or seventy percent of the fiber and nutrients (including folate and iron) that cooked dried ones have, according to some sources. Other sources, such as the nutritional information printed on packages at grocers, indicate that canned beans have about half or less the folate of cooked dried beans and about half the fiber. Finally, a 2007 USDA report on anti-oxidant properties of foods suggests that canned beans may only have a quarter of the anti-oxidant capacity of cooked dried beans. (Note that the exact amount of nutrients dried or canned beans have depends on the drying/canning process, and also the soil the beans were grown in, so it can vary with the brand.)

Additives and Preservatives in Canned Beans

Canned beans (some organic brands excepted) may also contain lots of salt or sodium, whereas dried beans have virtually none. Canned beans sometimes also contain a little calcium chloride (the latter is used to keep the beans firm when being cooked for canning, the same way honey, molasses, vinegar, and tomatoes do when you bake or barbecue beans). The calcium chloride content is no problem for most people, unless they have digestive problems.

Finally, some canned beans, even those whose labels say "organic," contain bisphenol A, a substance associated perhaps with breast cancer, according to World's Healthiest Foods, and which may be particularly harmful to children and teens, according to information at the FDA. WH Foods nevertheless says it's just fine to substitute canned beans for fresh when you need convenience; better at least than going without beans altogether (for more, see World's Healthiest Foods, "Ask George . . . "). However a Consumer Reports study suggests that some canned foods, including green beans, may contain well over the daily limit. Whether additives are an issue or not, store-bought canned beans just never taste the same as made-from-scratch beans.

Alternatives

Fresh green beans cook fast in a microwave. Dried lentils also cook rapidly. Frozen lima and other frozen beans also cook rapidly without soaking. Another alternative is to can your own.

Canning Your Own

What's needed to can beans is a pressure cooker, to cook (not boil however) the beans at at least 240 degrees fahrenheit (that is, under eleven to fifteen pounds of pressure). Note that home-canned beans will not, in spite of any online information to the contrary, keep as long as store-bought ones.

Canning Versus Freezing

Home-canned beans keep several weeks. If you freeze chili or bean stew instead, these keep several weeks or longer in the freezer (quality may decline after a month or so). Freezing is considered the better way to preserve vitamins, particularly vitamins A and C. Canning however allows you to store the beans on a shelf (out of the sunlight of course) instead of in a freezer, and is great if you plan to take the beans with you fishing (just keep them out of the sun).

Bean salads and barbecued beans can well because the marinade is generally acidic, that is, vinegar-y, enough. The ideal PH of any food canned should be below 4.4. Beans can be canned at 185 degrees f at this PH, but it's better to put them, after cooking them, into jars which are placed in a water bath inside a pressure cooker, and cook (again, not boil) them ten minutes longer, under 11-to-15 lbs of pressure. Bands should be screwed loosely over the jar lids during pressure cooking, then tightened when jars are removed from the water bath. The bands also should be re-tightened periodically as the beans cool, until the beans have reached room temperature. Anything containing meat or dairy products absolutely needs pressure cooking and even then, canning these is risky.

If you freeze beans instead of canning them, use plastic freezer containers or vacuum bags, not jars of course (unless you enjoy broken glass).

Pressure Cooking and More

Beans can be cooked on a grill prior to pressure cooking and canning – in an iron pot, dutch oven, or skillet. This increases iron content and also adds a bit of ash. An iron pot can do a bit of "pressure cooking" itself (though not at the recommended pressure for canning, but just enough to make the beans cook faster and taste better), if you simply place a couple of stones on the top of the lid.

After cooking beans, put them in clean canning jars. Place the lid on each jar, and loosely screw on the bands, and place the jars into the pressure cooker rack for water bath canning. Cook the beans (in the jars of course) in the cooker for at least ten minutes, at about eleven-to-fifteen pounds of pressure (240 degrees fahrenheit; again do not boil the water).

If you've already cooked the beans, ten minutes is plenty. If you're adding honey, tomatoes, whiskey, or extra vinegar, do this just before putting the beans in jars. To infuse the beans with these, leave them in the pressure cooker for a just bit more than ten minutes. (For more on infusion, see the information in "Cooking Methods," under Cooking 101 at Miss Vickie's Pressure Cooker Recipes.) The addition of either vinegar or whiskey lowers the PH of the beans, which makes most of bacteria in them (but not all) still more susceptible to the heat.

Cool the cooked beans upright in the jars, at room temperature, tightening the lids as they cool, then seal with wax, and store. To serve the beans, reheat them for several minutes at at least 150 degrees fahrenheit, adding a bit of lemon or lime juice, vinegar, or water as needed.

What to Can

You can of course, using a pressure cooker, can plain beans, that have been simmered in nothing but a drop of oil and a pinch of salt or seaweed, for use in various recipes later. This gives you flexibility in menu planning. However, you may get better results and a tastier product if you prepare a recipe for chili, barbecued or baked beans, or split pea soup; or mashed beans that have been seasoned and cooked and can be refried.

The advantages are: first you've cooked the entire dish "from-scratch" before canning it; and second, any spices, vinegar, or molasses in the cooked beans will help preserve them.

Can only carefully picked over and cooked beans. If you can fresh beans, make sure they are very fresh. For more on cooking beans, see "Beans About Beans."

Barbecued Beans, Three-Bean Salad

As noted barbecued beans (such as my "Honey-Barbecued Pinto Beans") and bean salads are excellent choices for canning. "How to Make Home Canned Pickled Three-Bean Salad Easily" (at Pick Your Own.org) explains how to can a bean salad.

Substitutions: Equivalents

Instead of using canned garbanzo and kidney beans for your three-bean salad, why not pressure cook your own? Anywhere from one-half to two-thirds of a cup of dried beans equals, when cooked , one 15-ounce can of cooked beans.

Try using a half cup of dried red kidney beans and a bit less dried garbanzo beans. Pressure cooking these will take anywhere from twelve to thirty minutes if you soak the beans first (Miss Vickie recommends soaking garbanzo beans for eight hours and kidney beans for four hours). You can substitute fresh lemon juice for the bottled juice too (one lemon provides about two tablespoons of fresh juice, so you'd need two lemons for the bean salad recipe at Pick Your Own). Finally, to reduce vitamin loss, you might also wish to try blanching the fresh green beans in your salad in steam instead of boiling water. And, when reheating the marinated salad, you can of course, reheat it in your pressure cooker (under 15 lbs of pressure!).

Crockpot (Slow) Versus Pressure Cooking

You may save more money using a pressure cooker to cook beans instead of a slow cooker. Besides expediting cooking times, a pressure cooker reduces the need for water, and retains water soluble vitamins. Slow cooking alas permits the growth of bacteria.

One option, instead of that crockpot, for getting flavors to "meld", is to simply refrigerate the beans you cook for several hours after cooking them, to let the flavors "do their thing." Several hours is plenty, and cooked beans can be kept at least two days in the fridge. Just make sure your refrigerator is cold enough (below 40 degrees fahrenheit).

If you insist on slow cooking, first cook beans on the stove (perhaps in a pressure cooker) till they are boiling hot. While the beans are cooking, prepare the marinade. You can then combine all together, and add the simmering mass to the crockpot. Alternately you can combine the boiling beans and hot simmering marinade in the crockpot. Either way, make sure everything is good and hot before adding it to the crockpot. Finally, make sure yo use the crockpot only on high. (And, if the crockpot goes off for even a short while, forget the beans; see also Jennifer Mueller's "Tips.")

To can crockpot-cooked beans, you will, of course, when they are cooked, need to place them in clean jars, place the lids and bands on loosely, and pressure cook them (at about fifteen pounds of pressure) for ten minutes more. The best uses for your crockpot may be (in this cook's opinon at least): mulling cider, making yogurt baking sourdough bread, and keeping cooked items warm for a buffet, at 150 degrees f or better.

Sources