Beans class info

If you read posts on my blog, you may remember I posted about chia a month or 2 ago.  I had learned all about it at a healthy cooking class taught by a friend of mine.  Well, I had a turn to teach the healthy cooking class and did mine on beans.  You may have noticed I've been sneaking them into all sorts of things lately.  Right after the class I started trying even more substituting of beans -this time for oils because of everydayfoodstorage.net.  She always uses purees though.  I'm going to start trying to sub purees for powdered beans (mixed with the dry ingredients of a recipe) plus extra liquid.  I did it in my recent post on chocolate molten lava cake and it was very successful.
Here is all of the information from the bean class that I had put together.

Why eat beans??

Beans are very nutritious. 

•They are high in fiber.  ½ cup has 25-30% RDV of fiber.

•High in protein – ½ cup has 6-7 grams of protein and costs only 20 cents.

•High in vitamins – thiamin, folate, vitamin B6, and niacin.

•High in nutrients like calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus, zinc, and manganese.

•Can help lower cholesterol,

•Can prevent spikes in blood sugar

•The soluble fiber in beans can help reduce the risk of heart problems.

•High in antioxidants – particularly black beans.

•Beans are high in lysine but low in methionine.  Grains are low in lysine but high in metionine and sulfur amino acids.  When eaten together they complement each other and provide an excellent source of protein.

Reducing Gas

It is a fact, beans can and do cause gas for many people because our digestive enzymes are not able to break down the raffinose sugars contained in beans.  Here are some ideas for reducing the not so pleasant effects of beans.

•Sprout the beans first. 

•Include them slowly in your diet to help increase tolerance.

•Use Beano. 

•Discard the soaking water. 

•Use bean flours to gradually introduce beans and increase tolerance.

•I have read that you can use epazote, kombu seaweed, vinegar, or baking soda in the water to help, but have not personally tried any of these.  I have seen epazote and kombu in books, saw all 4 mentioned online today.  Vinegar did warn about it making the beans stay hard.   I’m no expert here.  Really they don’t cause me any problems. 

Ways to cook beans

•Soak first –  Then rinse, drain, and simmer for the amount of time listed in chart on page 2. Choose 1 of the following soaking methods

•Soak overnight

•Soak 24 hours /begin and/or begin to sprout

• quick soak by boiling  for  2 minutes then let soak covered for  1 hour.

•Avoid the soak completely and just cook them extra time –  For example black beans take about 2 ½ hours to cook from dry.  I have tried this and it works fine.

•Cook in a jar – discussed at class.  Basically cook in side a canning jar in a canning pot in a water bath.  Takes about 2 ½ hours but you can cook multiple jars/variety of beans at a time.

•Slow cooker –approximately 6-7 hours on high, or 12-13 on low

•Pressure cooker  - sorry, not an expert here. 

•Boiling water over bean powder – Nearly instant mashed beans.  

•Bring 1 cup water to a boil, whisk in  1 cup bean flour and 1 cup cool water.  Cook and stir for 1 minute.  Season as desired.  Or use as a oil replacement in recipes. 

Other ways to incorporate beans

•Grind dry beans into flour either in a grain grinder, or a good blender if you have one.    Use in place of up to ¼ of the white or wheat flour in baked goods.  I usually go somewhere between 1/8.  If something has 3 cups flour, I’ll use ½ cup bean flour and 2 ½ cups regular flour.  I will warn you, this changes the taste of the dough, and I don’t like the dough, but once cooked, the item tastes normal.  Can’t tell the beans are there.

•Make bean purees by pureeing cooked beans with a little bit of water.  Use the puree to replace oil in recipes.  (I don’t do this as much and haven’t done it lately, but I have tried it in the past and it does work.)

•Use as a meat extender or replacement.  For example add beans to taco meat to make it go further.  I’ve even made a sloppy joe type dish with baked beans.

•Toss cooked beans into a salad

Bean cooking/sprouting chart

Bean	# cups of water per cup of beans	Overnight soak?	Cooking time   (simmer)	sproutable
Adzuki	3	No	90 min	Yes (w & S)
Anasazi	4	Yes	90 min	Yes (w)
Black Eye Pea	4	Yes	1 hr 15 min	Yes (w)
Black bean	3	Yes	90 min	Yes (w&S)**
Cranberry	3	Yes	1 hr 15 min	Yes (w)
Canelli	3	Yes	90 min
Fava	4	Yes + peel skins	3 hours
Garbanzo	4	Yes	3 hours	Yes (W &S)
Great Northern	3	Yes	2 hours
Kidney	4	Yes	90 min
Lentils	2	No	25-45 min	Yes (W&S)
Lima	2	Yes	60-90
Mung	4	No	1 hr 15 min	Yes (W&S)
Navy	4	Yes	2 ½ hrs
Pinto	4	Yes	2 hrs	Yes (S) **
Red	4	Yes	2 hrs
Soy	3	Yes in fridge	3-4 hours	Yes but hard **

Most of this information comes from a book called A Word of Wisdom by Amy Cox Jones. (referred to in the chart as W)

Another book I have and like called 366 Delicious ways to cook rice, beans, and grains gives cooking times at about half the ones listed.  If find the ones above to be a bit more accurate. 

For additional information on sprouting, sproutpeople.com is an excellent resource. (referred to in the chart as S)  ** - sprout people advises cooking the sprouts before eating for better digestion. 

Bean nutritional value charts can be found here http://www.dietbites.com/Diet-2/beans-calories-nutrition-info.html or here http://www.healthalternatives2000.com/legumes-nutrition-chart.html

These are the recipes I shared

Taco pizza

Slow cooked black beans

Gluten free chocolate cake (made with garbanzo beans)

Sweet pineapple and red beans (just the beans and rice, not the bundle)

waffle mix

waffle mix zucchini muffins 

black bean pasta 

cherry cake + how to make pureed beans from dry beans in under 10 minutes.

This year Benjamin wanted a cherry cake for his birthday.  I really had no idea how to go about making a cherry cake.  I looked up various recipes on allrecipes.com but they mostly used a can of cherry pie filling or something and I had frozen cherries I wanted to use, so I didn't choose any of those.  I finally found this recipe on everydayfoodstorage.net.  I edited it to make it cherry and use frozen cherries not freeze dried.  I made a cherry cream cheese frosting to go on top.  The cake turned out a bit heavier than I expected, but still good - think more like a pound cake texture than a light and fluffy cake.  I loved the icing.  It was very good.  Really I was happy to make a cake that was pretty healthy -excluding the sugar of course.  :)
If making again, I'd probably just use white bean flour and worry less about the amount of cherries/liquid I was adding.  I could probably get away with adding more cherries if using bean flour.
Here is how I made it (hopefully I correctly remember my changes.  :)

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour (I did use 1 3/4 white and 1/4 wheat)
• 1 1/4 cups sugar
• 1 Tablespoon baking powder  
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup white bean puree (see below for a quick way to make bean puree from dry beans, or puree canned white beans, or use butter)
• 3 Tablespoons powdered milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups frozen cherries, defrosted and pureed to make about 1 cup puree.

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and powdered milk.  
3. Add bean puree, vanilla, eggs and cherries.  Beat until well mixed.
4. Pour batter into 2 8 or 9 inch round cake pans.  Bake 30-40 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean.  (I was not a good timer here.  Forgot to set it at the beginning - sorry.)
5. Cool and frost.

I made frosting using the following

• 1 8 oz package cream cheese
• 1/4 cup cherries, defrosted, juice poured off, then pureed
• 1/4 teaspoon almond extract
• 3-4 cups powdered sugar

Directions

1. Cream all ingredients together in a bowl.

How to make bean puree from dried beans -This info comes from the book Country beans by Rita Bingham.

1 cup whole beans = about 1 1/8 cups bean flour

1 cup water + 1/2 cup bean flour = 1 cup "instant mashed beans"

2 cups water + 3/4 cups bean flour = 2 1/2 cups fluffy mashed beans

Directions

1. Bring 1 cup water to a boil then whisk in 1 cup bean flour mixed with 1 cup cool water.  Cook and stir for 1 minute until mixture thickens.  Reduce heat to medium low, cover and cook 4 minutes more stirring occasionally.  
2. Use as oil replacement in recipes or even as refried beans - adding salt and spices of course.  

Of course you can just take a can of beans and puree them to get bean puree, but this isn't super time consuming or anything and it is a way to use dried beans.  (More on beans coming soon.)

my favorite way to chop spinach (using fresh in place of frozen spinach)

Lately I've been buying the big costco bag of spinach to make green smoothies.  However, I somehow don't manage to make them as often as I want to and so I usually end up with extra spinach that goes bad.  Sooo, when I have a recipe calling for frozen spinach, I often just chop up some regular spinach and toss it in the pot.  I either just fill the pan and chop with scissors or fill a cup like this and chop.   Just be advised that by weight that small little box is a lot more fresh spinach than you think.  See the white colander in the picture?  I used that to weigh the amount of spinach I needed and I probably filled the colander.  Don't worry, cooked it wilts and turns out just fine.