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the great beanathon
Is there a topic on which the earnest student cook hears more contradictory advice than on dried beans?
Soak them. Don't soak them. Soak them overnight. Bring them to a boil, turn off the heat, and soak them for two hours.
Salt the soaking water. Don't salt the soaking water. Salt the beans at the beginning of cooking them. Don't you dare salt them till they're completely cooked.
Boil them. Never let them cook above a simmer. If you turn them off and then turn them on again, they will be ruined. The one thing you absolutely cannot do is cook them in a slow cooker (that from the manufacturer of a slow cooker). And be very, very careful not to overcook them.
Who's right?
I have a theory. Nothing you can do to dried beans ruins them (unless you fail to cook them through, and then they're not ruined, they just need to cook longer). (Burning them does ruin them.) (Burning ruins just about anything.)
The reason there's so much contradictory advice is that every method works.
The cook who starts out salting the draining water and never interrupting the cooking tastes the wonderful beans and never deviates from that method. The cook who quick‑soaks and doesn't salt till the end finds her beans equally delightful. Cook #3 never soaks, salts at the start, uses a slow cooker, and interrupts the cooking as often as she likes. (Cook #3 is m-c.)
The only way to get some insight into this morass is to devise an experiment. There are 96 distinct possibilities. How many could an individual taste before succumbing to bean fatigue? No, this must be a joint effort.
Here's what we propose, our experimental design, so to speak.
Five different methods, chosen at random from the list of 96, will be employed to cook five pots of beans, all five starting from the same batch of beans bought from the same source at the same time. A small number of people will come for a bean tasting. Each will have six tiny bowls, assigned by standard double-blind methodology.
Because there are only five preparations, the six bowls will of necessity contain at least one matching pair of beans. The taster's first task is to identify which of her bowls match. Her second task is to rank the beans in order of preference, most liked to least liked. And third, she gets to identify (or, failing that, to guess) which methods in which combinations were employed.
Our fantasy is that famous food people will flock to these tastings, eager to contribute to the sum of human knowledge -- human knowledge about dried beans, that is. The beanathon tastings will rival the great salons of Enlightenment Paris, the coffee shops of 18th-century London, the downtown bars of the New York School painters and poets.
For now, however, we're starting small. If you'll be in Seattle, either living there or visiting, and you'd be willing to contribute, please send us a message suggesting times that would be convenient for you.
Each taster can see her own scores, if she wishes, but the results will be made public anonymously. We might say, for instance, that our tasters have included Nigella Lawson, Tom Douglas, and Mario Batali, but we won't tell you how they scored; their results will be published only in the aggregate.
Please let us know what times are good for you:
xxx, mb + m-c
Questions? Comments? Corrections?
Suggestions? Contributions?
Please let us know!
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