I dare you to make the recipe for baked beans in this week’s Twice as Tasty column for the Flathead Beacon and tell me you can’t taste the difference between it and a store-bought can of baked beans. That can might be convenient, but it has nothing on the flavor and texture of beans you bake yourself in the oven. The canned version probably wasn’t even baked; instead, it was boiled or steamed before being tossed in sauce and sealed.

Good baked beans are a multilayer process. The techniques I shared earlier this month for Brined and Seasoned Pot Beans help to speed up the steps and intensify the flavor of the final dish. I pair these with my favorite shortcut when cooking dried beans at home: using one pot of cooked beans as the base for several distinctly different meals.

Learn more about cooking dried beans and get the complete recipe for Vegan Oven-Baked Beans in my column.

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Twice as Tasty

Whenever I pull out a pot and dried beans, I soak at least 1 pound in the brine, even if I only need 1 cup for a recipe, to minimize my soaking and cooking sessions. Cooked beans keep well in the refrigerator for several days, and I use the extras before I have to worry about their quality. That doesn’t mean we’re eating the same meal all week. I use them up in widely varied recipes or sneak them into salads, quesadillas, omelets, or other thrown-together meals.

Even if I can’t use the refrigerated beans within the week, it’s worth cooking a whole pot. Cooked beans freeze well and stand in beautifully for canned ones in many recipes once thawed. To make them easy to use, freeze cooked beans in 1- to 2-cup portions. They have the best texture when used within 6 months.

Excited about cooking with dried beans? Here are just a few other recipes on the blog that can use dried beans and dried lentils, which don’t even need to be soaked before cooking. You can find more in the recipe index.

• Vegetarian Red Beans and Rice
• Chickpea and Vegetable Couscous Salad
• Sourdough Empanadas
• Harira (Moroccan Tomato Lentil Soup)
• Smashed Bean Pasta
• Herbed Bean Salad
• Black Bean Veggie Burgers
• Zesty Baked Chickpea Snacks
• Spiced Red Lentil Dip
• Mason Jar Gifts: Mixed-Bean Soup

Learn about another way to use dried beans—sprouted or simply brined and ground—in this Baked Falafel article I wrote for Clean Plates. You can find more of my work off the blog here.

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.