Canning Dried Beans

My husband is a chili aficionado. He LOVES the stuff, he likes to make it, and it’s usually pretty darn good. So I have relegated all chili making tasks to him. During the winter months we have chili about once every two weeks or so. We usually make a HUGE pot (in our 7 qt slowcooker), and use anywhere between two and three cans of kidney beans. When we can get them on sale, it is usually for about $0.88 a can, but lately I have noticed the non sale price to be about $1.25 a can. Since we are using 2-3 cans per batch of chili, what would normally be a fairly economical meal adds up quickly. Our solution? Enter dried kidney beans – much cheaper than cans, at about $5.50 for a 4 pound bag, but who knows an entire day in advance that they are going to cook chili. Oh wait, there are some of you that meal plan that far in advance, and trust me it is one of those things on my “to-do” list. However, in the meantime, I needed a better solution – home canned kidney beans.

Here’s how I did it.

Beans Soaking

Step 1: I started with 2 – 1.8kg (about 4lb) bags of kidney beans plus some remnants of a bag that I had leftover so I am estimating just shy of 10 pounds. Start the night before you want to do your canning by soaking the beans, I put them in my cheese making pot (a 30 qt stock pot) added water to about double above the level of the beans, I always like to add too much water instead of too little, and let them sit overnight.

Step 2: Drain the beans, rinse, and refill the pot to about 3 inches above the level of the beans. Turn on the heat and bring to a boil. Note: according the the canning gurus at ball you are supposed to let the beans boil for 30 minutes. Mine actually boiled for about 5 and simmered for another 10 while I got the jars ready.

Filling the jars.

Step 3: Fill up those jars. I used the handy red scoop to scoop the almost cooked beans out of the pot. You don’t want to strain the water off of the beans, because you are going to use that almost boiling temperature water to top off your jars. I filled the jars to the threads, then shook them which settled the beans down to about the shoulder of the jar. At this point you can add whatever seasonings you would like to the jar. I just stuck with salt, about 1 tsp per quart jar. Top off the jars with the hot liquid, leaving about one inch of head space in each jar.

Step 4: Wipe down the rims and put on the lids. Don’t forget to simmer your lids. Ask me how I know…

Step 5: I am not going to go into a lot of detail in the “canning” section. The way I figure, if you are looking for a guide on how to can dried beans you are already probably a competent canner. Please follow the instructions for your pressure canner. Load up your jars, lock down your lid, and wait for the steam to start exhausting.

Step 6: Wonder why after almost an hour you have no steam exhausting. Realize that you forgot to oil your seal and steam is escaping out of the back where it is not obvious. Turn off the heat and start all over again….GRRRR. Oh wait, that was just me. The rest of you can just skip to step 7.

Up to pressure – finally.

Step 7: Once you are up to up to pressure, 10 pounds in the case. Let her go for 90 minutes for quarts and 75 minutes for pints.

Step 8: Turn off the heat and let the pressure return to zero before opening.

Step 9: Remove jars. I like to put my jars on a folded towel on the counter where I let them sit for 12-24 hours before removing the rings and putting them away.

10 pounds of dried kidney beans ended up being 18 quart jars, so I put on a batch dried chick peas so that I had something to run with the extra 5 quarts in the second run. While the kidney beans were canning I brought the chick peas to a boil, let them boil hard for 10 minutes, then turned off the heat, covered, and let soak. When I turned the heat off the pressure cooked I drained the chick peas added new water and put them on to re-heat. From a 4.4 pound bag of chick peas I ended up with 7 quarts of finished chick peas.

Enjoy all your hard work.

Now for the math. Did this really save us money?

• $11.00 for the two bags of kidney beans
• $2.50 for two boxes of lids
• the jars were recycled.

Each jar holds about the equivalent to 2 cans of beans, and there are 18 jars which would equal 36 cans of beans that we did not have to buy. The cost for those 36 cans @ $1.00 a can would be $36.00. My cost for ingredients was $13.50. So yes, I did save money, $22.50.

The other factor that comes into play here is the time, because I understand that this is an easy but time consuming project. It does not take a lot of “hands-on” time, BUT, you do have to be close to the kitchen for at least 5 hours for a two canner load batch like I did. Actual hands on time was likely less than an hour.

So what do you think? Is a savings of over $20 worth spending 5 hours close to the kitchen? Let me know what you think in the comments.

Pizza Roll

I am a fly by the seat of your pants type of cook. My cooking style is the reason I love to cook, and hate to bake. Baking is too rigid. Cooking is flexible, I add whatever I want to a dish, and cross my fingers that it works. So far, it has! There are very few recipes for main dishes in this house!

Typically when I do a large batch of dough, I split it into three balls, one for pizza, one for a treat, and one for bread, or some combination of the above. So far, since getting my Bosch mixer I haven’t strayed far from the bread dough recipe I was given with it. Hey, if it works….and well, if I have to follow a recipe it might as well be one that I know works, and tastes good.

The following “recipe” is one of my hmm, I wonder if this will work experiments, which, did! Work that is.

I started offby making the filling. All I knew at this point was that I wanted something that was going to play off pulled pork. The farmer doesn’t eat pork, except for the occasional bacon, so I started with some chicken that we canned when we processed our chickens this summer. Let me tell you this stuff is PHE-NO-MI-NAL. Love it! Makes suppers SO easy. It’s like having instant shredded chicken any time, AND its shelf stable. What’s not to love?  I will be posting a tutorial the next time we process chickens. But for now, back to this recipe.

I put this into a frying pan, along with some, onions, garlic, and some yellow peppers that were getting close to their expiry date.

Yes, it is not your imagination, the pile of garlic is just as big as the other two. That is how we like it around here!

I sautéed these until the onions were just starting to lose their bite.

Next, I rolled out the dough and slathered it with our favourite BBQ sauce, President’s Choice tequila and habanero. Yes, that is a picture of the bottle, and no, I am not being compensated in any way for telling you that we LOVE the stuff. It has a bit of heat, but is not overpowering, with a slightly sweet undertone. Seriously, if you live in Canada and have access to PC brand products, you should try it.

I topped the BBQ sauce with my chicken, onion, garlic, and pepper mixture, then on my half put pineapple, and on the farmer’s half put some sliced banana peppers. At this point I rolled it up like a gigantic cinnamon roll, and tucked the end under to trap all the deliciousness inside. I had planned on putting cheese on it, but I forgot, and in all honesty, it really didn’t need the cheese, it was absolutely delish just the was it was. I baked it at 375F for about 30 minutes. Since the filling was already cooked and hot, all that we were trying to do was bake the bread. I took it out when the bread was starting to brown, and it was perfect.