Dry Pinto Beans
Drying or dehydrating beans or any other type of fruit or vegetable is beneficial for many reasons. While dried fruit makes a tasty treat, you are not going to want to go snacking on hard, dried pinto beans. Drying pinto beans allows you to store and preserve the beans for a longer time prior to use. Pinto beans or any other type of beans can be dried easily.
Instructions
1. Pick fresh, full pinto beans from your garden. Allow the beans to sit for no more than 2 days in the pods before you shell the beans. To shell the beans, remove the individual beans from each pod and throw away the bean pods or shells. You may reuse the pods as compost or simply sit the shells outside to compost on the ground.
2. Place the shelled beans into a colander. Rinse the beans thoroughly by running cold water over the beans several times. Work your hands through the beans as the water runs, knocking off any dirt of debris that may be on the beans.
3. Place the beans in a cook pot of boiling water for approximately 5 minutes. Drain the cook pot and immediately place the beans in a large bowl of ice water and the beans to sit for another 5 minutes in the cold water.
4. Drain the beans and spread them out in a single, loosely packed layer on cookie or baking sheets. Remove excess water by blotting across the layer of beans with a paper or cloth towel.
5. Place the cookie sheet of beans inside an over and heat the oven on the bake setting to 100 degrees F. Leave the oven running for full 30 hours at this temperature; this is a good weekend project, as you do not want to leave the oven on unattended.
6. Remove the beans from the oven once they are crisp and hardened. Test a bean, after it cools a few minutes by trying to grind the bean under a spoon or in an empty pepper grinder. If the bean grinds easily, it is dried out completely; if the beans will not grind easily because they are still moist inside. Place the still-moist beans in the oven again and dehydrate a while longer on the same heat setting.
7. Place the dried pinto beans in a plastic zipped storage bag, a sealable jar or other sealable container. Follow dried pinto bean cooking instructions to prepare the beans for a meal.
Tags: beans from, dried pinto, beans other, beans other type, cold water
