Today's post is mostly about making instant refried beans. But first, there are a couple of small items I wanted to bring to your attention.
The first is that red kidney beans can cause some pretty serious, as in
painful, food poisoning if they are not prepared properly. Properly,
when it comes to kidney beans, means boiling them for at least 30
minutes. Red kidney beans prepared in a slow cooker may not reach the
temperatures necessary to destroy the toxin. If raw or undercooked
kidney beans--as little as 4-5 beans--are eaten, severe nausea,
vomiting, and/or diarrhea may begin in as little as 1-3 hours.
It usually lasts for about 4 hours and there are no reports of
death associated with red kidney bean poisoning. (And it's only red
kidney beans that are so toxic. White kidney beans are fine.)[1]
The next item concerns using bean flour in SOS Mix instead of
cornstarch. You may recall that I previously substituted coconut oil
for butter in Magic Mix with fabulous results. I sometimes get crazy
ideas in the shower, and I got to wondering whether bean flour, which is
recommended by the bean flour cult as a good substance for thickening
sauces and soups, would work in SOS Mix. So I made some. I made two
batches of cream of chicken soup with that bean flour-SOS Mix. I burned
those soups in the pan twice that day. And mind you, I haven't burned
anything like that in several years. Especially without leaving the
kitchen. And especially while I was in the act of stirring. After the
first fail, I realized I had to add more bean flour to achieve the same
level of thickening as with cornstarch. It just wouldn't thicken as
well or quickly and I ended up burning it again. But the burn didn't
permeate to the soups. The soups just remained very, very blah. Even if
the soup tasted good, the risk of burning the pan is too high. It's
definitely not worth it. But if someone needed something to thicken
their soup because they didn't store flour or cornstarch, they could use
it.
And finally, on to refried beans.
We were about out of refried beans last week, so it was time to pressure
can some more. It's super easy to do, quite inexpensive, very healthy,
and helps rotate the food storage. I love being able to pull out a jar
and simply heat, mash, and eat.
But I really don't like taking canning jars, especially quart jars, on
camping trips, and I got to thinking about dehydrating my own beans to
use when camping or when the power goes out and we need an easy meal.
We had tried refried beans from the Home Storage Center several years
ago and didn't like them. Maybe they were too far out of date. Perhaps
I didn't add enough water. They were stiff and tough. Maybe I just am
spoiled by homemade beans. And we don't like store-bought refried
beans, either. Something's just not right about them.
So my idea was to pressure can and then dehydrate my own. And because
the goal was dehydrating, I decided to re-use previously used canning
lids. After all, I didn't need the jars to seal since the beans were
going straight into the dehydrator. I didn't use lids that were clearly
totally tweaked out, because I feared making a bean mess in the canner,
but all the lids I did use were previously used. Why not?
All but two sealed. That was unexpected, to say the least.
So the beans in the other two jars, the ones that failed to seal, were
mashed and spread on dehydrator sheets and dried for about 6 hours at
135 degrees.
I wanted to try them immediately to see if they work for my family. If
they weren't going to fully reconstitute, I didn't want to make more.
For the first attempt, I brought some water to a boil and then added
mashed beans, brought the water to a boil again, and then put the lid on
and turned off the heat. The bean chunks were still hard and
unacceptable ten minutes later. So I turned the heat back on and cooked
and stirred them for about ten minutes. This softened them fully. But
it's not ultimately a time-saver, because I could just open a jar of
beans and have them ready to eat in ten minutes as well, without the
hassle of dehydrating. But for reducing the weight in a trailer or
backpack, it works.
The next attempt was with turning the dehydrated refried beans into
powder in the blender. The beans powdered down very well, and very
compactly, I might add. So that was good. Now for the taste test. I
brought some water to a boil in a small saucepan and then added the bean
powder. It actually takes a bit of stirring to make sure you don't
have any bean powder lumps and that you're going to have the right ratio
of beans to water. I don't really care for the consistency, though. I
like bean chunks. But it was acceptable, and would be especially so in
an emergency. There was definitely nothing wrong with the flavor and
it would work well for soups.
My family and I are pretty happy with plain refried beans. But I
realize that some people like to jazz theirs up a bit. So here's a
recipe for some spicier refried beans from powder.
Spiced Up Refried Beans
3 cups pinto bean flour (pinto beans cooked, dehydrated, and powdered in blender)
2 tablespoons dried minced onion
2 teaspoons cumin
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
Links to related posts:
Bean Flour
Refried Beans
Magic Mix
SOS Mix
For further reading:
[1] Bad Bug Book, US Food and Drug Administration, https://www.fda.gov/media/83271/download (accessed 19 March 2020).
20 march 2020
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