Cooking Dried Beans
There is a large variety of legumes (beans) in the world, over 4,000 have been categorized. To further complicate matters, there are fresh beans, classified as vegetables, and then there are pulses (legumes). I’ll leave it to wikepedia, and other sources to sort this all out for you, while we continue on to how to process legumes, the dried bean.
In my kitchen, I’ve learned to appreciate more then just the pinto bean, which is one of the most highly consumed beans in the southwest. There are black or turtle beans, fava or broad beans, chickpeas and garbanzos. I’m working on incorporating anasazi beans, and white beans. These form the basis of our protein diet, since my partner is gluten-free and cannot consume wheat for protein.
