Frugal Intuition

“Beans, beans, the musical fruit.  The more you eat ‘em the more you…”  Ahem.  I digress.

With the cost of food on the rise, I’ve been on the lookout for ways to slash the grocery bills.  Given that the most expensive thing on the list tends to be meat in its various forms, one way you can cut costs is to explore alternate sources of protein. Beans are an incredibly cheap, flavorful source of protein that are low in fat and packed with good for you nutrients.  And there are ways to avoid the “musical fruit” part (I’ll get to that in a bit).

Beans are available at your local grocer both dried and canned (and in some cases in the freezer section).  Canned beans are pre-cooked, convenient, and require no effort on your part other than opening and rinsing.  But I’m going to make the argument that dry beans are a much better value.  Here’s why.  A can of beans ranges from 15-16 oz.  That’s about 2 cups of beans.  Here’s how the prices for the store brand canned varieties stack up at my local grocery:

That sounds not so bad, right? And certainly it’s cheaper than meat per serving.  But look at how dried beans (also store brand) stack up.  One pound of dried beans = 2 cups of dried beans = 6 cups of cooked beans.

That’s 40-50% cheaper per cooked cup.  These guesstimates may be a bit off on how much the dried beans produce cooked (it varies from variety to variety), but either way, dried is cheaper.  That makes beans an outstanding value and a great, cheap source of protein.

Remember, the little things add up.

But dried beans take time to prepare.

Well, yes, they do.  But it requires forethought, not a lot of actual work on your part.

That crock pot that’s been hiding out in your pantry collecting dust?  Yeah, pull it out and clean it off.  This is your new best friend.  If you’ve maintained a close personal relationship with your crock pot since someone gave it to you as a wedding present or for your first apartment, good for you.

The first step is to pour the beans into a colander and sort through them to make sure there aren’t any rocks or twigs or other indigestible things in there (this is not a huge problem, but this is a natural food and from time to time something will slip through the sorting machines).  Give them a rinse.

Now, there are two ways to prepare dried beans.  You can soak them.  Or you can not soak them.  If the “musical fruit” aspect of beans bothers you, I suggest you soak them.   Ideally, you would dump your dried beans into your slow cooker crock and cover them with 6-8 cups of cold water.  If I bother with this step, I generally do it overnight.  You can remove the most indigestible complex sugars (this is what causes flatulence) by changing out the soaking water a few times during the 8 hour soak.

After you’ve soaked your beans overnight (or for at least 8 hours), pour off your soak water and give the beans another rinse.

Now dump them back in your crock pot and cover with 6-8 cups of cold water (the water level should cover the beans by 2-3 inches).  Cook on low for 8 hours or high for 4.  Use as you would canned beans for any recipe.

Once they’ve cooled, you can store them in ziplock bags or small plasticware containers (I can get 4 2 cup containers at the Dollar Tree for $1, so that’s what I use).  They’ll keep in the fridge for a week and in the freezer for…well I don’t know personally, as they never last longer than 3 weeks in our house, but one source says up to 6 months.

The fact of the matter is that what you’re paying for so often at the grocery is convenience.  Don’t even get me started on those boxed dinners whose slogan is “Today’s Homemade.”  Shudder.  If you just take some time to do a bit of prep and packaging yourself, you make your own convenience foods that are cheaper, healthier, and taste better.  All it takes is a little bit of effort.

I’ll be talking more about batch cooking later on, so stay tuned.

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