I'm trying my hand at canning dry beans. Y.A.M. and I found good prices on 4 and 5# bags of beans at the Indian market nearby. I looked up how to can dry beans and the first batch were done today, they happen to be adzuki beans. What many of the canning and preserving websites and books will tell you is how to can dry beans with a standardized recipe that appears to cover all kinds of dry beans.
They don't.
There are quick cooking dry beans and slow cooking dry beans, all of which need different pre-cook times and soaking before getting put into jars and canned. One thing is consistent: your pressure for canning dry beans is 75 minutes at 10#. (adapt as needed for your altitude)
Beans that I would term as quick cooking, needing a VERY MINIMAL amount of pre-cooking (bring them to temperature and that's all) would be: adzuki beans, black eyes, and large lima. These are really delicate beans that will cook to death if you follow the "pre-cook for 30 minutes, then put into jars" method. Remember, you are cooking these little guys for 75 minutes after being put into jars! For a bean that needs 40 to 60 minutes of cooking in the real world, I would really say it's all combined into too much damn cooking.
I can't find the reference, but one blog had mentioned just soaking your beans, topping with boiling water, cover and can. I am very strongly leaning in that direction, adding cook time to long-cook dry beans like: baby limas, kidney beans, garbanzos, pink beans, small white beans, and likely black beans. I think I would cook them no longer than 15 to 20 minutes (boiling) before putting into jars.
Legumes are good protein, but you do need to eat them with a grain to take in a complete protein. If you don't, you body will just take from your tissues the amino acids to create a complete protein, and that really gets you nothing, unless you are feeding in a particular amino acid that you are short on (and not many of us really are). The highest protein per calorie is coming out (in my research so far) as the black eyed pea. Good to know, but legumes are still fairly high in calories and carbohydrates to truly exchange them for animal proteins in the diet. Now, when the ZA happens, animal proteins are going to be tough to come by, so legumes/grains might be the way to go, and we'll need those extra calories, as food will be harder to come by, too. Something to consider there.
The benefit here is that SD can just go get a jar of beans and some other stuff, heat and dinner is done, so that's the bonus for us. Dry beans also will go bad after 6 months to a year, getting tough and taking longer cook times for an inferior product, having them canned encourages use and rotation of stock, because it's easier to deal with. Also to think about is during the ZA, fuel sources and water might be scarce, so cooking your dry beans might be neigh on impossible to do. Keep your options open.
