da_667I'm making chili today with dried beans I soaked overnight. I let them soak and tasted one this morning and its sort of crunchy, but not rock hard. I'm thinking I should give them a boil before I put them in the pot to soften them up to the consistency I'm used to.
I've never done this before. I've always used canned beans, and I don't have that luxury anymore because the canned beans are LOADED with salt.
Neo Ehproque@da_667 wow, that's in America, right?
@ehproque yeah. for example, a can of dark red kidney beans from wal-mart, 260mg of sodium. Which, you think "eh, that's not terrible." but then, I dump two full cans of beans into my pot for chili. each can has 3.5 servings. 260*7=1,820mg sodium. The daily recommended value of sodium per day is 2300mg.
Now given, I won't eat ALL of the chili in one sitting, but salt reduction is very important to me.
So, to get around this, either you get fresh beans and soak/cook them in advance, or you look for "no salt added" and that goes from 260mg a serving to like, 10mg. So, 70mg of sodium for 2 cans, instead of 1800.
@da_667 I complain about not being able to buy any low salt cooked stuff in the UK but at least kidney beans are 40mg per can. If beans are such a big issue you may want to invest in big freezer and batch cook them, as they freeze very well