Beans and Taters

My brother-in-law is in charge of cooking the beans in his house, and with good reason.  He has mastered the Instant Pot for turning dried, hard, potentially gaseous beans into a hearty, flavorful meal.

All the Instant Pot books rave about how much better beans cook and taste when made in the pressure cooker, so it only makes sense that my next venture involved cooking beans.  Of course all the books say "it depends" for how much time, which beans to use, how much water, how to season, etc., but my sister-in-law wrote down the instructions for me.

For this first venture, I used pinto beans and northern beans, 1 c. dried of each.  The key is to cook them for a few minutes, drain the water, and then add new water along with whatever you have on hand for seasoning.  Pre-cooking the beans and rinsing helps eliminate (or at least greatly reduce)whatever chemistry creates the gassy-effect that beans have on the digestive system.  

For seasoning, I used about 1/2 c. finely diced celery (2 small stalks), 1.2 c. chopped baby carrots, 2 tsp. of dried minced onions, two generous shakes of Worchestershire sauce, 2 tsp of salt, and three shakes of black pepper.  I measured the amount of water necessary to cover the beans plus 1/2 inch (my 6 qt pot required 3 1/2 c. water to reach the desired level).

Since I hadn't cooked beans in the Instant Pot before, I started with 20 minutes on high pressure with natural release.  I checked them after the pressure released and they had been left in the pot for about 35 minutes after the pressure cooking stopped.  The pinto beans were still a bit crunchy (like a soft nut) so I restarted the pressure cooking for another 5 minutes which was just about right.  Next time I'll start with 23 minutes rather than 20 and see if that makes a difference. 

I didn't have any ham or bacon to add to the beans while cooking; as such, they needed more salt at the table. I'd recommend adding the ham for additional flavor rather than risking adding too much salt while cooking.

We like "taters" with beans, and these Simply Potatoes brand traditional mashed potatoes are both a convenient and delicious addition to an inexpensive meal.