The virtues of canned beans can't be denied: They offer a significant time savings, are almost always cooked perfectly, and don't taste half bad. But whenever someone tells me that their dried beans don't taste much better than canned, I know instantly that they're not cooking the dried beans right. Follow just a couple of simple rules, and I guarantee that your cooked-from-dried beans will be worlds better than anything you can get from a can.
Always Add Aromatics to the Pot
The first rule is to season them properly with salt. The common wisdom says to do that only after cooking them, but, as Kenji has shown, you should actually salt both the bean-soaking water and the bean-cooking water for best results. Since he's written about that at length, I'm going to focus on the second rule here: Always add aromatics to the pot.
It may sound too basic to be true, but aside from salt, there is no more drastic way to improve the flavor of your dried beans than to cook them with flavor-enhancing vegetables and fragrant, woodsy herbs.
There's very little to the method itself, which I use no matter the bean recipe. After soaking the beans and draining the soaking water, transfer them to a pot, fill it with cold water, and then add a bit more salt, along with whichever aromatics are available. Bring the water to a low simmer, then cook it all together until the beans are tender. Those aromatics in the pot will revolutionize the beans' final flavor.
The aromatics I tend to use are onions, carrots, garlic, and celery, and then heartier, woodsy herbs, like rosemary, sage, and thyme, which marry beautifully with the earthy-sweet flavor of beans. If I have rosemary, sage, and thyme, I might put a sprig of each in; if I have only one of them, then I'll add a couple of sprigs. I try not to be too fussy about the specifics, and am extremely casual about quantities. If I don't have celery and carrots, then I'll just toss in an onion and a few cloves of garlic, plus the herbs. No herbs? Probably not worth a special shopping trip just to get them. If I'm at the market and know I'll be cooking some beans, though, I always try to grab the most essential aromatics (onion, carrot, and garlic) and at least one of the herbs.
That said, it's fun to experiment, as well as to keep the geographic origins of the dish you're making in mind. Maybe some leftover fennel bulb or fronds will find their way into my bean pot one day, or perhaps I'll reach for a different herb, like Mexican epazote, if I'm going to be making refried beans on another occasion.
On lazy days (i.e., most days, at least for me), I just toss the vegetables into the pot and deal with fishing them out later, which can be a little tricky after slowly simmering them to the point of turning them to mush. As for the herbs, I'll often tie up rosemary and thyme with some kitchen twine (or stash them in a tea infuser), since their small leaves can otherwise fall off and get scattered throughout the pot—a lazy person does not want to stand around hunting for rosemary needles in a pot of cooked beans, ever.
If I'm being particularly obsessive about my need to retrieve every last bit of the aromatics, I'll tie them all up in a cheesecloth bundle, making their ultimate removal extremely easy.
I'll leave it up to you to decide whether to go commando or create a cheesecloth sling, just as long as the aromatics end up in the pot one way or another. Because leaving them out isn't much better than reaching for the canned stuff.
The aromatics I tend to use are onions, carrots, garlic, and celery, and then heartier, woodsy herbs, like rosemary, sage, and thyme, which marry beautifully with the earthy-sweet flavor of beans.
We're talking onions, shallots, garlic, and chiles. Or maybe some fresh herbs like rosemary, sage, bay leaves, and thyme. This is where the flavor really starts to build. Salt the liquid again (lightly) after about an hour of simmering.
Dried beans cooked with sea salt and water are delicious, but adding an onion, garlic, or other aromatics to the pot will make them even more flavorful! These simple additions turn the starchy bean cooking liquid into a fragrant broth that's just as tasty as the beans themselves.
You can add crushed whole seeds (coriander, cumin, fennel, mustard, etc.), woodsy herbs (thyme, oregano, rosemary, sage), red pepper flakes, crushed garlic cloves, and of course salt and pepper.
In general, most beans go well with herbs like parsley, rosemary, sage, savory, and thyme. You usually can't go wrong with garlic and onions, either. Specific kinds of beans, like fava beans or mung beans, have other affinities with particular herbs and spices. This is not to say that other combinations won't work.
Commonly-used aromatics include leeks, onions, carrots and celery, but the list goes on. Fennel, garlic, lemongrass, ginger, scallions, spicy chili peppers or bell peppers, bay leaves, thyme, parsley and peppercorns are all aromatic ingredients.
Water is perfectly good for cooking beans, but if you want extra flavor, why not add another liquid? You can cook beans in any kind of stock, for example, or any kind of combination of stock and water that you want. You can also add some wine or beer for more flavor.
Epazote (pronounced eh-puh-ZOE-tay) is an herb native to Mexico and Central America that is perhaps best known for its carminative, or gas-relieving, properties. Cooked with a pot of beans, this herb can lessen the “negative effects” and adds a distinctive savory, earthy flavor.
Fresh or dried branchy herbs — rosemary, thyme, bay leaves, oregano, sage — work best with beans when they are added at the beginning of cooking. Tie them up with some kitchen string if they are still on their branches, or just throw them into the pot if you don't mind retrieving them later.
Cajun and Creole use the "holy trinity" of aromatics consisting of onions, celery and green bell peppers. Asian cuisines have their own version of the aromatic trinity as well, consisting of ginger, garlic and scallions, which is common throughout Chinese cuisine.
Introduction: My name is Velia Krajcik, I am a handsome, clean, lucky, gleaming, magnificent, proud, glorious person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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