Comments on: Sous Vide Black Beans

By: adam

adam — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 03:37:27 +0000

How did that come out in terms of volume? Precision always helps of course, but I don’t think this needs to be exact as long as you err on the side of more – too little and they’ll be dry, but the only effect of having too much water in there would be some extra liquor at the end.

By: Pete Johnson

Pete Johnson — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 03:31:59 +0000

I just dropped a small experimental batch in the SousVide Supreme. I checked Harold McGee’s “On Food and Cooking” and learned that dried beans absorb their own weight in water, so I rinsed 4 ounces of dried black beans, added 4 ounces of ice cubes and a bit of diced onion to the cooking bag. I wanted a weight measurement, rather than eyeballing equal volumes of beans and ice cubes. If I like the result, I’m going to try a larger batch using chicken stock instead of water. I’ll check for doneness at 24 hours.

By: adam

adam — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 13:57:31 +0000

I’d check them after 24 – just squeeze the bag and you can tell if they’re done. Most of the recipes I’ve seen call for them to be cooked at 195F for much less time. I liked the way these came out. A similar experiment didn’t do so well with white beans – they went a kind of sickly brown color, halfway between the raw white bean color and baked beans. Not dark enough to be appetizing. They tasted ok, but looked really nasty.

By: Pete Johnson

Pete Johnson — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 03:25:39 +0000

Gee, Adam. Thirty six hours to cook beans… But I like beans, so it’s tempting enough that I’ll grab a bag of black beans at the grocery store tomorrow to see what I think. The ice cubes are a smart idea.