5 mistakes we make when cooking our legumes

Legumes are wonderful: rich in protein, vitamins and minerals, cheap, easy to store and easy to prepare even in surprising ways… or not? There are still many things that we do wrong with legumes and that lead many people to give up their consumption. And it shouldn’t be like that, legumes are nothing Martian or exotic, they have been with us all our lives and all we have to do is cook them according to their characteristics.

Next I explain five very common mistakes that we usually make when cooking dried legumes and that, if we correct them, they will become the queens of our dishes, without complications and without problems.

1. Use “old” legumes

If your legumes have been there for more than a year, it is very possible that they are “old”. Over time they lose more water and there comes a point where may be impossible to cook. No matter how much you soak and cook them in the pressure cooker, they will still be hard.

This is called “HTC default” (Hard To Cook) and not only involves dehydration but a whole complex range of reactions and mechanisms (such as lipid oxidation and formation of insoluble pectates) that occur over time and storage, and that can be aggravated later by other factors such as soaking in hard water.

When in doubt, use a new package, and if you transfer them to a jar to store them, write the expiration date that comes on the container. The best way to avoid this is have the legumes always at hand, so we don’t get forgotten at the bottom of a kitchen cabinet. And if you don’t usually make them often, it’s better to buy smaller packages (there are half a kilo and a quarter kilo) or already cooked legumes.

2. Do not soak

There are legumes, such as peeled lentils, that do not need to be soaked to cook quickly, but for others it is convenient let them hydrate before putting them in the pot.

For chickpeas and beans (and other large legumes) the ideal is to leave them soaking in plenty of water for 10-12 hours. With this we rehydrate them and we get them to soften in much less time. Also with this soaking we deactivate the phytic acid that they contain and we make part of the oligosaccharides that give us gases pass into the water.

Once the soaking time is over, discard that water and put new water in the pot to cook the vegetables. And make it hearty too (about double in volume).

3. Use very hard water

It’s not an error itself. the hardness of the water depends on where we live. In Madrid, for example, the water is considered soft, while in provinces such as Tarragona or Castellón the water is very hard. The amount of calcium carbonate is what determines this hardness.

whatYou form a lot of lime in the taps, the kitchen and the bathtub? Surely your water is hard or very hard (you can check the hardness of the water in your province by searching on Google).

It’s not that it’s bad to soak and cook the legumes in hard and very hard water, is that they can be harder, need more cooking and soaking time, and have a much fuller texture than with soft water. This happens among other things due to the formation of insoluble pectates in combination with the calcium in the water.

The solution is quite simple and it is not necessary to spend on mineral water. We can use bicarbonate of sodawhich through chemical reactions eliminates calcium and magnesium by precipitation, and sodium chloride (normal and current salt) due to the ionic exchange with the pectates (it helps to soften the legumes). I know that it is often not recommended to add salt to the legumes when we are going to cook them to prevent them from being hard, but here we are talking about a cooking process with very hard water, so the conditions are different.

For the soak, add a maximum of 1 gram of bicarbonate per liter of water to the water. For cooking, maximum 1 gram of bicarbonate per liter of water and maximum 6 grams of salt per liter of water.

Note: up to 1 gram if your water is very hard; if it’s just hard, you’ll need a lot less. If we go too far with bicarbonate, the structure of the legume will be broken and it will also taste terrible.

4. Do not use a pressure cooker or express cooker

Dried legumes, even if we leave them to soak, need to be cooked later. If we use a normal pot, as they will need several hours in water at 100ºC, they will shoot the energy expenditure (and time, we are not going to spend five hours watching the pot…).

Pressure cookers cut cooking time to much less than half. Larger legumes (beans, chickpeas, soybeans, etc.) can take up to 6 hours to soften in a normal pot, while soaking and cooking in a pressure cooker will take half an hour or less. It is much faster, more practical and more efficient.

5. “Scare” the legumes

Cutting the cooking by adding cold water does not make much sense. To start, we have to turn off the heat and move the pot away, letting it cool down enough to lower the pressure and open the lid. Then add the cold water, which lowers the cooking temperature, and then close and return to the heat to cook for another few minutes once the maximum pressure has been reached.

If what we want is remove as much raffinose as possible and stachyose, the oligosaccharides that cause flatulence, we have to start from the beginning: soak, discard that water, cook in new water and, if we stop cooking, let it be to discard all that cooking water and add new water.

If we leave the same water, there will continue these compounds. Of course, if we change the water we also throw part of some desirable elements such as minerals down the drain. In conclusion, don’t do it. You will only make them take much longer to cook.

The best method for avoiding gases is to consume legumes frequently. In a short time you will get used to them and they will not give you gas.