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January 31, 2010
I Did Read the Recipe
I soaked the beans.
And a day later drained them and put them in the pot.
Then even measured two quarts of water. Because that's what the recipe said. I put the water in the pot.
I boiled the water. Like the recipe said. Then turned it to simmer. Like the recipe said. Recipe further said to let it simmer for two or so hours.
I was fine up to that point, and for the next 20 minutes.
See, I had every intention of freezing some of the beans. And I didn't want the ones I was going to freeze to overcook. In fact I wanted them undercooked.
So 20 minutes of simmering later, I took a spoon and grabbed a bean out of the water and tried it. I expected it to be still quite hard.
Much to my surprise, it was almost fully cooked. So I dug around in the pot for the largest kind of bean. It too, was much closer to fully cooked than I expected after 20 minutes.
What the hell.
If I follow the stinking recipe and simmer another hour and a half, the beans will be mush.
It took longer than I should feel comfortable admitting for me to figure out where the disconnect was.
It was the meat.
Had I actually followed the recipe, I would have added meat to the soup. And of course it would have been the meat that needed all that time to cook.
The beans were done enough to freeze.
Twenty minutes later, the rest were soup. And were delicious.
Written by Angela Tanner. January 31, 2010 01:37 PM