Beans: Cooking guidelines

For beans, slow cookers rule. They’re at their best when cooked long and slow. Boiling should be avoided, as it coagulates their proteins, resulting in hard, unpalatable beans. (An important exception should be made here for dried kidney beans, cannellini, and broad beans, which need to be boiled for 10 minutes to eliminate their high levels of the toxic lectin phytohaemagglutinin.)

If you are at a higher altitude, or your beans are beginning to harden due to age and less-than-optimal storage conditions, a pressure cooker can help soften them up. Pressure cooking also dramatically speeds cooking time, and the soaking step should be eliminated to avoid turning the beans into mush.

Another advantage of a pressure cooker is that it reduces the lectins and phytic acid in beans more effectively than any other method. Beans do have an annoying tendency to clog the pressure-release valve, however.

India is the world’s top consumer of beans, and it’s not without reason that their cuisine is so rich in pungent spices, for many of these aid in the smooth digestion of beans and other oligosaccharide-rich legumes. Asafetida (hing), cloves, ginger, cumin, anise, basil, caraway, and dill are all said to reduce gas.

Other promising gas-battling tactics we’ve read about include drinking orange juice with beans, cooking them in stock, and allowing a carrot to cook with the beans and then throwing it out before serving. YMAYGFMV (Your mileage and your gut flora may vary.)

A serving suggestion:

Eating fermented foods along with your beans is another way to facilitate comfortable digestion, and to combat the gassy aftermath. Kimchi, sauerkraut, lacto-fermented salsa, and cultured cream all contain beneficial, digestion-enhancing enzymes, and can serve as a pleasing garnish or side dish with many bean dishes.