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So true to City Girl form, I did my research. Read at least a dozen descriptions online for how to cook beans in the pressure cooker. THEN I discovered that my pressure cooker manual actually DID have instructions for cooking dried beans. (I couldn't find them before because it was under a category called 'Dried Vegetables'.) Now, keep in mind that my pressure cooker is old. I mean OLD. Like, after the elderly next door neighbor lady died 10 years ago, I bought it at her estate sale for 25 cents. Like so old it has directions for how to cook with it on a coal or wood stove. For real. Check it out:
So, when the instructions said to soak the beans for 12 hours AND cook them for 35 minutes I thought it seemed a little odd. After all, everything I read online said to cook them for 15 minutes. Some said not to soak at all. Some said to soak. I thought, "This thing is really old. Maybe it's different. I better just do what it says." So I put the beans in to soak before I went to work in the morning and when I got home I turned on the heat. I couldn't quite cook it for 35 minutes because I had to run and pick up my four-year-old from preschool before they closed...but I figured 25-30 minutes was probably fine given that everything else online said 15. Yeah right. When we got home, I opened up the pressure cooker and what did I get for all my efforts? Mush. Black Bean Mush. Maybe people in the 1950's or whenever my pressure cooker is from ate their beans like mush? Whaddya think? I have no idea, but it's not how I eat them! Ah well. At least I was only making black bean dip. I can make mushy work for that. And now I know for next time. FIFTEEN minutes. And maybe I won't even soak 'em.
Anybody use a pressure cooker to cook beans? Anybody do it with an ancient one like mine? How do you do it?
