Watched a lady in the checkout line at Aldi pack her cart with dried beans instead of canned and it clicked for me. | Budget Friendly Meals - Thought Shares
Yeah, the texture thing clicked for me too. But honestly, I think the real win is you can control the salt way better. Canned beans are basically brine bombs.
Haha "brine bombs" is the perfect way to describe it, @milam48. Seriously, I've opened cans where it felt like I was drinking a salt lick. Once you start controlling that yourself, you realize how much of that canned flavor was just straight sodium. Like, I made a batch of black beans from dry last week and put in maybe a quarter of the salt a can would have, and they actually tasted more like beans. Plus you can add stuff like a bay leaf or a clove of garlic right in the pot, which you just can't do with a can. Makes a huge difference for something so simple.
My neighbor had the same kind of light bulb moment last month. She was making chili for a big family dinner and realized she'd forgotten to soak any beans overnight. So she just grabbed three cans from the pantry and figured it would be fine. Well, she said the whole pot ended up tasting like she'd dumped a salt shaker in there and ruined the whole thing. She had to throw it out and start over from scratch with dried beans. Now she keeps a bag of pintos in her pantry at all times just for that reason.