When people tell me they never cook dried beans, their most common excuse is that it takes too much time. I get it. When I need a quick dinner, I often pop open a store-bought can of beans. But the more I cook dried beans, the more I savor the improved texture and expanded variety compared with commercially canned beans. The techniques for preparing dried beans that I share this week in my Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon play a big part in my preference for home-cooked beans.

I make the best beans when I soak them for at least 6 hours in a cold-water brine and then simmer them on the stovetop. They keep their plump shape and have a consistent, creamy interior once cooked. I sometimes quick-soak them in warm brine or cook them in a pressure cooker, but only when I don’t mind that the skins will split.

Learn more about cooking dried beans and get the complete recipe for Brined and Seasoned Pot Beans in my column.

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Twice as Tasty

The vast section of canned beans in a grocery store aisle proves to be deceptively diverse. When you winnow out the various brands, sodium levels, and added flavors, most cans hold one of a half-dozen varieties. In contrast, even small natural-food stores often carry more than two dozen varieties of dried beans.

In recent years, I’ve been growing more shelling beans in my garden. Not only do rarely marketed heirloom varieties attract pollinators, improve the soil, and let me save and replant year after year, but the ones I save to cook have a creaminess I never get from commercially canned or store-bought dried beans, no matter how I cook them.

The colorful beans I photographed for this week’s recipe are Borlotti (or cranberry) beans I grew last season. The photo shows them after they have been soaked in brine and mixed with the seasonings they will cook with in stock. They turn out velvety and flavorful and keep their bright color. I love them in Vegetarian Red Beans and Rice.

This winter, we’ve also been eating homegrown Cherokee Trail of Tears beans, which look and taste much like black turtle beans but have an ultracreamy texture. I use them in any recipe that calls for black beans, from burritos to Black Bean Veggie Burgers.

A third homegrown variety in my pantry is the creamiest of the bunch: turkey craw beans. I cook them with homegrown scarlet runner beans for a flavorful, eye-catching combo to top Smashed Bean Pasta. I also layer these varieties with my homegrown black and cranberry beans as attractive Mixed-Bean Soup Mason jar gifts.

For recipes that present whole beans on their own, I still cold-soak the dried beans in brine and simmer them on the stovetop—but just in water instead of with aromatics in stock. The brined beans cook more quickly than unbrined ones and stay mostly whole with their skins intact. The common shortcuts that speed up this process—soaking dried beans for less time in warm water or skipping the soak—tend to split the skins and cook the beans unevenly, and unsoaked beans are harder to digest.

In contrast, the combination of brine and a stovetop simmer in water produces whole beans ideal for salads, like Three-Bean Salad with Fresh Herbs, Chickpea and Vegetable Couscous Salad, and Herbed Bean Salad (turkey craw beans make a superb creamy stand-in for cannellini beans here). These techniques also produce the ideal texture for Zesty Baked Chickpea Snacks.

When I plan to puree the beans and don’t mind their split skins, I cold-soak the dried beans in brine and then cook them in a pressure cooker. They cook in less than 10 minutes and blend smoothly and evenly into Creamy White Bean and Yogurt Dip and Roasted Garlic Hummus.

Find more recipes that can start with dried beans in the recipe index. You can also learn more about storing and using dried beans in this blog post.

Want more Twice as Tasty recipes? Get my books! Click here to order a personally signed, packaged, and shipped copy of The Complete Guide to Pickling directly from me. I also share tasty ways to use pickles in The Pickled Picnic; it’s only available here.