A Drain’s Not the Only Place for Bean Liquid

By Katie Barreira

I’d prefer dried beans to canned any day, but the reality is that canned beans have a place in my pantry and so does their liquid.

Poke around the Web and you’ll see that bean liquid has a bad rap. But the biggest beef is its high sodium content and there’s an easy answer for that: buy low-sodium or sodium-free beans (like Eden Organics). They’re better for you anyway.

Another common complaint is that the cloudy liquid has “gunk” in it. I get it; coagulated starch balls don’t do much for me either, but I’ve found that higher-quality canned beans tend to be less gunky and when in doubt, you can just pour the liquid through a sieve. It’s no harder than draining the beans.

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In Love with Cranberry Beans

By Lori Powell

This past weekend, I went upstate to visit with friends and neighbors that I hadn’t seen in a while. But truly, the other real draw was to visit the farmers’ market two miles up the road from my house in uptown Kingston, New York.

Much devastation was brought upon the farmers in that area. All the flooding and high winds destroyed crops to the point that they were completely washed out and their wares were found tumbling over the falls in High Falls, New York.

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Use Your Bean

By Katie Barreira

Cooking with dried beans requires minimal effort and begets peak results. Why haven’t I been using them all along?

Canned beans tend to be overly soft and bland, when compared to their recently re-hydrated counterparts. I’ve taken to incorporating canned beans into a dish only during the last few minutes of cooking, to maintain their texture. While it’s unlikely that I’ll ever banish the canned variety from my pantry, a dried bean is a terrible thing to ignore.

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