This post will show you how to cook dried beans in a CrockPot or slow cooker! This post compares the results for cooking soaked or unsoaked beans, with everything you need to know to make perfect slow cooker beans. Dried beans are the beginning of so many tasty dishes, and they are very cheap when cooked from scratch in the slow cooker. See Dried Beans for all dry bean recipes on this site.
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Why learning how to cook dry beans in a slow cooker slow cooker is so important? This post will tell you why I think cooking your own beans from scratch is worth it, and give you the easy process to cook dry beans in a slow cooker!
Why eat dried beans?
Dried beans are one of those foods that have everything going for them. Beans are inexpensive and are a good source of many vitamins and minerals, plus they’re also high in fiber, high in protein, and naturally low in fat, sugar, and sodium. Many types of dried beans are listed among the healthiest foods in the world, and beans are also listed as one of the superfoods we should all eat frequently.
Not only are beans nutritious, but they’re loaded with healthy, slow-burning complex carbohydrates and have a low glycemic index, making them a good food choice for anyone who’s concerned about blood sugar, whether for weight loss or health reasons. If you’re keeping a close eye on your carbs, you may want to eat them in more moderation, but even in small amounts, dried beans add plenty of flavor and nutrition to many dishes.
Why bother cooking dry beans from scratch?
The taste of beans
in a can is incomparable to the delight of freshly cooked dried beans! And dried beans that are cooked from scratch are much cheaper than canned beans. You can cook a batch of beans and freeze them in small containers to keep them in the freezer. And cooking your own beans removes the cans that fill your recycling bin!
How to cook dried beans in a slow cooker: Need to soak the beans?
Learning how to cook dry beans in a slow cooker is one of those wonderful ideas I discovered through food blogging. After trying to cook beans this way, I did the experiment described below to see how soaking the beans would affect cooking time. I cooked my beans over high heat, but if you’re not going to be home, you can always cook them longer over low heat. The cooking time of dried beans will vary greatly depending on how fresh the beans are, so I can’t give you the exact cooking time, but I will give you the approximate times. (See after my recipe for the ways other food bloggers use their slow cookers to cook dry beans.)
I started with 2 cups of dried pinto beans, using beans from the same package for both cooking pots.
<img
src=”https://kalynskitchen.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/crockpot-beans-1-kalynskitchen.jpg” alt=”” /> I soaked the beans in the
green slow cooker overnight (about 10 hours).
The beans in the brown cooker were not previously soaked.
The beans in both slow cookers were covered with enough water to cover about 2 inches. I didn’t add salt to the beans. (For pre-soaked beans, drain the original soaking water and use fresh water to cook the beans.)
I turned both slow cookers to the HIGH setting, put the lids on, and started a timer to time each cooker.
The beans pre-soaked in the green cooking pot were tender and fully cooked after
3-4 hours over high heat. The unsoaked beans in the brown cooking pot were tender and fully cooked after 5-6 hours.
Honestly, I was quite surprised that pre-soaking didn’t make more of a difference in cooking time. I really couldn’t notice much difference in the taste or texture of the soaked versus the unsoaked beans. Both methods produced about 6 cups of cooked beans from 2 cups of dried beans. I froze my beans in 2-cup containers to use in recipes.
Ideas for Using
Slow Cook Beans:
Beans
are one of the most versatile ingredients you can find, and they frequently appear in bean soup recipes, bean stew, bean salads, and side dishes. Beans can be combined with chicken, turkey, beef, and eggs, and there are also many well-known foods around the world where beans are the star ingredient, such as refried beans, hummus, Socca and Falafel.
[recipe]
Other Food Bloggers
Cook Dry Beans: How to Cook Pinto Beans in a Pressure Cooker/Instant Cooker ~ Letty’s KitchenThe BEST Black Bean Slow Cooker Recipes ~ Slow Cooker or Pressure CookerThe BEST Black Bean Instant Cooker Recipes ~ Slow cooker or pressure cooker Slow cooker/pressure cooker
Beans and legumes Index ~ Slow cooker or pressure
cooker
Weekend Food Prep:
This recipe has been added to a new category called Weekend Food Prep to help you find recipes you can prepare or cook on the weekend and eat during the week!
Low Carb Diet/
Low Glycemic Diet/South Beach Diet Suggestions: All types of dried beans are a low-glycemic food that is approved for the South Beach diet, but portion sizes for phase one should be limited to 1/3 to 1/2 cup serving size. Dried beans are probably too high in carbohydrates for other low-carb diet plans.
Find more recipes
like this: Use the diet type photo index pages to find more recipes suitable for a specific eating plan. You may also be interested in Follow Kalyn’s Kitchen on Pinterest to see all the good recipes I’m sharing there. Click here for slow cooker/pressure cooker recipes on my other site!
Nutritional information? If you want nutritional information for a recipe, I recommend entering the recipe into this nutrition analyzer, which will calculate it for you. Or if you’re a Yummly member, you can use the Yum button on my site to save the recipe and view the nutrition information there.
Have you used a CrockPot or slow cooker to cook dry beans? If so, please share any tips or suggestions you have in the comments.
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