okay, i'm in the midst of a cooking marathon! with our schedule getting fuller, i need some food that i can pull out of the freezer and just pop in the oven. last friday night, i made 3 meatloafs and 2 lbs of meatballs in just a little over an hour which inspired me to take on a bigger chunk of time to make more.
yesterday and today i have a long list of what i want to accomplish:
cut and freeze celery (from the produce co-op)
broccoli-some for now and some to freeze
cook beans-some to freeze for winter soups, some for refried beans
chicken pot pie
poppyseed chicken
brown-bag burritoes
chopped chicken
blueberry muffins (?)
lettuce prepped for week ahead
well, yesterday, i started on the beans. i have never made dry beans before. i was inspired by moneysavingmom who bought 6lbs of dried beans for a mere $6 at sam's. she showed that she had 5, 2 cup containers of beans. i was thinking that for all those beans, she sure didn't have alot. but i started working.
first, i soaked my beans. they kept expanding. i kept having to add more water and pull out more pots to put the beans in that were overflowing. by the time they were done soaking, i had 2 crockpots, 1 stock pot and my two largest cooking pots FULL of beans. i have not 10 cups of beans...oh no. i have 60 cups of beans. yes, 6. 0. sixty. good grief!! pretty hilarious. so, now i know about how to make beans. :) and now, i'm going to learn how to make refried beans. anybody need some beans??
(this is less than half of the beans that are cooked!)
today has already gotten off to a better start. i'll let you know how it all winds up.
4 comments:
I, too, have been inspired by MoneySavingMom to do more cooking for freezing...but since I don't have a deep freezer, I can't do too much at a time. If I lived closer I would love to take some of those beans off your hands! I cooked up a normal sized bag last year in the crockpot to use for soups, etc. and it was definitely a money saver. I'll be doing that again soon, now that it's getting cooler.
mel, i got our deep freezer off of craigs list for a steal of a deal. it was worth every penny. :)
I want to know specific details about what you are doing here. What the H with the beans!!! When you say cook them for soups - I don't know what that looks like. Just too visual - need descriptions. HELP - cause I need to do this soon. (And WHAT are brown bag burritos???)
Becky,
I'll tell you what I did. And I am by no means an expert!
1. Rinse your dry beans and pull out beans that are funky or rocks (that's what I read on my package but I didn't find any!) and by funky, I mean, bean halves or things that are sprouting.
2. Soak your beans in a big pot of water for about 4 hours. Make sure you have plenty of room for your beans to expand and lots o' water in there. I had to constantly add water and move beans because I didn't do the above, but it didn't seem to ruin anything.
3. Drain and rinse.
4. Cook your beans. Because of the sheer quantity of beans I had, I did this two different ways. One, I put my soaked beans into the crockpot, covered it with water and let it cook on low for about 10 hours. They were perfect. Two, I put them in a stockpot, covered with water, brought them to a boil and then let them simmer on low for about 1.5-2 hours checking every thirty minutes to see if they needed any water added and to skim the surface of the junk (you'll see what I mean when you get there.) When they get soft, they're done. Taste and see.
5. I froze the beans in 4 cup increments as I normally use two cans of beans at a time in my recipes and that's a bit more than two cans worth.
So when I make taco soup next time, I'll just put in a bag of the beans and let them cook with the rest of the soup. Make more sense?
Brown Bag Burritos are AWESOME! Here's the link:
http://amysfinerthings.com/brown-bag-burritos
I do exactly what she says. Two tips, make sure to stir the mixture as it cooks. I left it too long one time and the whole bottom of the mixture burned. ICK! Second, I fill with a 1/3 cup instead of 1/4th. Seems to work better for me.
Hope this helps!
Post a Comment