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PSA: I picked dried beans over canned for a whole chili season and saved $86, but the texture threw me off
Last fall I decided to stop buying canned beans for my weekly chili and try the dried ones from the bulk bins at the WinCo on the north side. A 1 lb bag of dried pinto beans runs about $1.29 and gives me roughly the same amount as 3 or 4 cans, which each cost $1.09 at my store. I did the math and over about 20 pots of chili from September to February I spent around $9 on beans instead of $95. The catch is the time. Soaking overnight is easy enough, but I kept undersalting the cooking water at first so the beans came out kind of bland and mushy. Once I added a full tablespoon of salt to the soak water, and a bay leaf plus a clove of garlic to the pot, the taste got way closer to what I was used to. I also learned that older beans from the bulk bin take way longer to soften, so now I check the date on the bin before I scoop. Has anyone else dealt with the mushy bean problem? Do you soak with salt or skip it?
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stellaperry2d ago
It's kind of the same thing I keep running into with cooking in general, where the cheap way is almost never actually the fast way, and you end up paying for it in time instead of money. I see it with stuff like making stock from scraps or grinding my own coffee, the savings are real but they only show up if you change your whole routine around them. The mushy thing is a good example, because it's not really about the salt or the bay leaf, it's about paying attention to the beans themselves and how old they are. That's the part nobody warns you about, that bulk bins sit there for who knows how long and you have to actually check. Salt in the soak is the move though, my grandma did it that way and never had a problem.
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