LTS, beans, and you

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Do you know why after soaking beans overnight you are instructed to drain, rinse well, and then use fresh water to cook the beans?  I was told we do it because it reduces flatulence, old wives wisdom and all that.  And actually it does, but the real reason to do it is to prevent illness.

Legumes and grains contain a type of protein called lectin.  Lectins can be toxic.  Lectins are also responsible for the gas inducing responses we can have to the magical fruit that is beans.  Soaking the beans draws out some of these toxins, so we need to discard the soaking water, rinse well, and start with fresh for cooking to reduce our exposure to the lectins.  The cooking process destroys most of what is left in the legume.

Now, there are different kinds of them, and they vary in how ill they can make you.  In fact almost all foods have some lectins, and some lectins are beneficial.  Different people also respond to the same lectins in different ways.  Beacuse we don’t digest lectins, we often produce antibodies to them. Almost everyone has antibodies to some dietary lectins in their body. This means our responses vary. However, some legumes, such as red kidney beans, are so full of toxic to humans lectins that they should not be eaten unless properly, thoroughly cooked.  (Red kidney beans are not suitable for sprouting!).

The temptation of post-SHTF bean cooking is to reduce water usage.  I’ve even seen advice to just cook  it in that water.  Don’t do it!  Modern packaged beans don’t need nearly the sorting and cleaning; you are unlikely to find rocks and dirt, but it’s still not good to ingest!  Find another way to use that water.  Use it for flushing, or if it’s the right season, water your garden with it.  I actually wonder if this might repel certain animals from nibbling at your plants – it’s thought that plants developed lectins to deter animals from eating their seeds and animals can smell the lectins.  That’s just speculation on my part though.

Keep in mind that it’s not just dried beans that can make you ill.  Some types of grains and legumes can be eaten raw (like a sugar snap pea, pod and all) but others (like a runner bean, can eat pod, but pod and contents needs to be fully cooked, or a mature fava, discard pod, peel inner bean and fully cook) need to be cooked to be safely edible.  If you don’t know for sure that your produce is safe to eat raw, err on the side of caution and cook it.

Multiple Bean Salad Recipe by Food Storage Moms

I haven’t had 3 bean salad since I was a kid.  I liked the tangy flavor.  But I really dislike wax beans, which is pretty much always one of the three beans in commercially canned Three Bean Salads.  I was looking into recipes for home canning 3 bean salad, when I came across this recipe at Food Storage Moms.  This is not a canning recipe, and I am not a canning expert to know if its even safe to can, but I thought maybe this is a smart thing to do anyway.  I don’t know if my family will eat canned bean salad at all.  They like beans, but the kids are a but sensitive to vinegary dressings.  What if I canned a bunch of jars and if Mom and I were the only ones that would eat it?  This recipe seemed like a smart way to make a small batch to test the waters, and hooray, no wax beans in sight!

I’ve got all the ingredients on hand, including some interesting celery from my latest CSA that is weird and thin and would be best used in a fine dice so I am definitely making a batch, as soon as I hit post. =)

This recipe is copied directly from Food Storage Moms (I am not sure why salt is listed twice in the brining liquid. I did post a comment and ask, but the original was posted over a year ago, so I don’t know that I will get a response. She did respond and just removed it.)

multiple-bean-salad-recipe1 can garbanzo beans, drained
1 can kidney beans, drained
1 can green beans, drained
1 can red beans, drained
1 can navy beans, drained
1 small onion, chopped/diced
1 small green bell pepper, chopped/diced
½ cup chopped/diced celery

Grab a quart mason jar and fill and shake the following ingredients

¾ cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
½ cup oil
½ cup vinegar (I prefer white vinegar)
½ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon paprika

Mix all ingredients in the jar that will fit. Keep in the refrigerator and serve well chilled. I always have excess beans that I add to the vinegar solution the next day to get one more meal out of it.