Beans Phaseolus vulgaris
Salt the soaking water. The old rule that salt toughens the skins is simply wrong.
21 recipes on this site
In the kitchen
Under heat
Extended simmering breaks down pectin in the cell walls until the bean softens from the inside out — rushing the heat cooks the outside before the center is done.
Against air
Dry beans are stable indefinitely; cooked beans left uncovered dry out and crack at the surface within hours.
In storage
Dry beans keep for years in a sealed container. Cooked beans are a fridge item for about a week, in their liquid.
At the shop
Buy dry beans from a store with turnover. Old dry beans, even sealed, take far longer to soften no matter how long you soak them.
Which variety, for what
- Black beans
- Firm skins that hold shape well through long simmering.
- Pinto
- Softer skins — the standard choice for refried or mashed preparations.
- Cannellini / white beans
- Creamy interior, good where you want the bean to partly break down and thicken the liquid.
Beyond the kitchen
THE THREE SISTERS
Beans, maize and squash were planted together across the Americas in a system of real agronomic sophistication: maize gives the bean a pole, beans fix nitrogen for the maize, and squash leaves shade out weeds and hold moisture. It is intercropping worked out over millennia.
NITROGEN FIXING
Legumes host bacteria in root nodules that convert atmospheric nitrogen into a form plants can use. This is why beans have been rotated with cereals since antiquity, and why they remain central to low-input and organic farming.
SALT DOES NOT TOUGHEN THEM
The old rule against salting the soaking or cooking water is wrong and has been tested repeatedly. Salted water produces better-seasoned, more tender beans with skins that split less. Hard water and old beans are the real causes of beans that will not soften.
HEIRLOOM VARIETIES
Phaseolus vulgaris has enormous diversity — thousands of landraces, many maintained by individual communities and seed savers. Beans are self-pollinating and easy to keep true, which is why so many named regional varieties have survived where other crops lost theirs.
A longer history
The common bean was domesticated independently at least twice in the Americas, in Mesoamerica and in the Andes, and was cultivated for thousands of years as one leg of the Three Sisters system alongside maize and squash. That combination underpinned agriculture across much of the Americas before European contact.
Beans crossed to Europe after 1492 and displaced older Old World legumes — broad beans, chickpeas and lentils — in many regional cuisines within a couple of centuries. Tuscan bean cookery, cassoulet, fabada and Boston baked beans all descend from a New World plant that Europeans adopted with unusual speed.
They remain among the most important crops in the world for protein, nitrogen fixation and drought tolerance, and the United Nations declared 2016 the International Year of Pulses on exactly those grounds. Brazil, India, Myanmar and Mexico are the largest producers, and beans are one of very few staples that improve the soil they grow in.
RED KIDNEY BEANS MUST BE BOILED HARD
Dried red kidney beans contain a lectin that causes severe sickness if they are undercooked, and it is destroyed only by vigorous boiling — soak them, discard the water, then boil hard for at least ten minutes before any simmering. Cooking them from dry in a slow cooker at low temperature does not reach that point and has been documented to make the problem worse, not better. Tinned kidney beans are already cooked and are fine.
Pairs with
Good with
Combines with
Used in these recipes
New Orleans Red Beans and Rice
Ribollita (Tuscan Bread and Bean Soup)
Seven-layer dip
Tuscan Sausage and White Bean Skillet
Silky White Bean Soup with Garlic Shrimp
Zupa Fasolowa (Polish Smoked Bean Soup)
Boston baked beans
Chicago-style chili
Chicken Enchiladas with Black Beans and Green Chiles
