About 4 years ago, not only had I started a healthier lifestyle by spending more time preparing healthy meals, I had also just started dating the love of my life. He went to Cuba for two weeks and upon his return, I thought I’d surprise him with an authentic Cuban dish, black bean soup (this isn’t the recipe but I tried this one recently and it was really yummy).
In my excitement and inexperience (and lack of attention), I failed to rinse the canned beans. The soup turned out REALLY horrible. It was a poor resemblance of food, a murky and pasty black bean mush…
A few days later he bought me The Joy of Cooking .
This book is crazy informative and tells you everything you would ever want to know about cooking and food. Of course I wanted to find out why my Cuban black bean turned out so horrible so under the section, About Substituting Canned Beans , it says, “Rinsing canned beans improves the taste a little and removes excess salt.”
The University of Michigan Integrative Medicine says that soaking beans gets rid of the hart-to-digest, gas-producing sugars and rinsing canned beans is absolutely necessary…unless you WANT gas.
Just recently, however, I ran into a Hearty Four Bean Stew recipe that says NOT to drain the canned beans!
So this begs the question, even though these raffinose sugars are hard to digest for humans, do they have any nutritional benefits? If they do, then cooking with the liquid that beans are soaked in may be a healthy alternative to cooking with beans.
Agricultural research, at least one source, seems to suggest that raffinose is a waste sugar and has practically no nutritional benefit.
What do you folks say about cooking with the liquid found in canned beans?
January 29th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Canned beans are a good solid substitute for the real thing, and the liquid they are stored in remove the need to soak the beans. a real time saver. HOWEVER, you need to rinse the beans in cold water before using! The recipe likely says not to drain the beans because it needs the fluids. RINSE them and then add the approx. amount of fluids you tossed out.
The reasons for rinsing are endless, but here are two good ones:
-cut the sodium by almost HALF
-they are stored in a TIN CAN, a tin can that you have NO WAY OF KNOWING how it got there. everything from extreme heat, extreme cold, jostling, banging etc etc causes leaching. any chance to rinse that off is a good one!
That’s my two cents! keep up the good work!
January 29th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
But isn’t it still true that beans are the musical fruit? Just asking!
And what about a discussion of Beano which counteracts all those proteins and the vicious gas attacks the lowly bean produces. I mean, sure, they’re cheap food that’s good for you but they do have noteworthy side effects but I don’t see them mentioned here. So I went ahead and did.
We’re all grown up here. I’m sure many of us reading these posts have cleared people out of entire rooms after gorging on a bean salad or some Mexican burritos. And the looks on those people’s faces: they’re aghast! Was there a pun in that last one. I seem to sniff one out; yes, yes there is one.
So, let’s get real here! Sure beans are good for you but stock up on the fire retardant (Beano) first or suffer the regret of the dire consequences.
January 30th, 2008 at 1:43 am
Rinse!
Rinse the processed oils, water, and salt away before eating.
you really only want the beans anyway right?
that’s my take on it.
January 30th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
Thanks for your input, Denise. Check two for rinsing canned beans!
Mitch, very good observation (or is it olfactorvation?) about the side-effects of beans.
In the sources I’ve come across, your digestive system adapts and gets used to digesting beans.
So I guess that old saying should go, “…the more you eat, the less you toot!”
January 31st, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Thanks for your vote, Rob!
Okay, guys, that’s four now for rinsing canned beans before cooking with them.