Learn the best recipe and tips to Cook any type of Beans in the Slow Cooker or Crockpot.
We give you a recipe that you can use even for a 3 quarts cooker.
After the recipe, we give you our best tips and tricks to get the best from your Beans!
Contents
How To Cook Beans in the Slow Cooker or Crockpot Recipe
Ingredients:
- 2 Cups of Beans
- 500 Ml of water
Instructions:
- Using a slow cooker or crockpot (bigger than 3 quarts) prepare 2 cups of beans. In case you want to make more than just 2 cups you can increase the number of beans, but with a bigger sized cooker.
- Choose and handpick the beans, and discard any broken or burn looking bean.
- Place 2 mugs of your selected beans into the pot, or any pot or Tupperware and let them soak for the whole night with cold water enough to cover the beans. The next day, drain the beans and let place them on a plate.
- Now is when the Crockpot makes its magic!. Place the soaked beans inside the crockpot or slow cooker and cover them with enough water.
- Turn the crockpot or slow cooker on High mode and cooked them until they are tender. It’s going to take around 3 hours and a half to 4 hours to be done.
- Now again Drain the beans.
- Whether pre-soaked or un-soaked, 2 cups of dried beans will make about 6 mugs of cooked beans.
- Beans can be frozen in a plastic container with a tight-fitting lid for a number of months up until you need to use them again.
Preparing your Beans beforehand makes a big difference
We always remember our grandmas or moms, leaving the beans at night on a plate with a towel, or some type of sealing paper. This is nothing new.
The tenderness and taste from the bean once is prepared and soaked beforehand makes the beans that come in a can look dry and flavorless in comparison
Another advantage for the pre-soaked beans is that they can be cooked from scratch and they are way more cheaper than the can brand ones.
You can cook a batch of beans and freeze them in small containers to keep in the freezer. And also cooking your own beans removes the cans that fill your recycling container!
How To Cook Beans in the Slow Cooker or Crockpot
Learning the process behind cooking beans is one of those cooking methods that stay with you.
Is more than just cooking, it’s a whole method that you need to follow thought and once you learn the right way you can cook it without any problem, it’s going to be something that you don’t even realize that you are doing.
You are going to find yourself leaving the beans from time to time to soak overnight, just in case, even if you don’t know what you are going to cook for the next day.
But like any procces you need to master it before you can feel so comfortable with it.
We try different methods and beans so we came up with a perfect time in most cases, but to be honest depending on the type of beans, and their consistency and origin there are going to be some variations in the time of cooking.
Depending on how fresh the beans are it is also a main difference for the cooking time. But on our recipe, we give you a 30 minutes frame that is fair enough.
Have in mind that in our recipe there’s a time frame for cooking the beans on HIGH mode, so if you select a medium or low heat for the crockpot or slow cooker you are going to have to increase the time for MEDIUM to 2 extra hours and for LOW 4 extra hours, so around double the time that will take on HIGH
Why Soaking the Beans is so important?
As we mentioned at the beginning if you can take that extra 5 minutes to put the beans on a pot with water the night before you are going to have not only better taste and tenderness but you will also have a better deal when it comes to cooking different recipes and for a better price.
We start to create the different recipes for each type of bean and realized that there wasn’t such a big difference between the cooking time ( 30 minutes give or take) but they always taste better than the can ones.
So for us that made the click, we didnt went back to the canned beans.
Another plus for the pre-soaked beans is that you now can add natural herbs, spices, garlic as well as pepper, or onions to the mix while you are making the beans, infusing the beans will certainly all that flavor.
Also, the appearance of prepared dried out beans is much, much better than anything that ever appears on a canned bean.
The only downside that we can find on cooking the beans beforehand is that you need to be aware of remembering to put them the night before and it’s a task that depending on how busy your day was can be something that can slip our minds.
Most recipes will require soaking the beans overnight so it can be a thing if you forgot to put the bean beforehand
While there’s nothing tough or time-consuming regarding unloading some beans inside a pot with water, you also need to remember to soak them. But how important its to actually soak them?
Soaking the beans beforehand will help you with:
- Minimize the cooking time.
- Creating a better-cooked bean, when it comes to texture and taste, and will create better-looking beans without split-open or burst beans
- It makes them even more digestible.
If you forget to soak your beans beforehand, they will certainly still cook. However, you’ll need to expand the cooking time to an extra 2 hours. (Occasionally it can take even longer, specifically if the beans are old.).