Cooking Beans - Success!

I have had the devil of a time lately trying to cook dried beans... seems no matter what I did they ended up crunchy and unappealing. Even when I dumped in enough baking soda to cure every case of heartburn at Taco Bell I had no success.

A couple days ago I was watching "How It's Made", and one segment dealt with making hummus. They start with dried chickpeas, wash them, soak them, then pressure-steam them before grinding them into hummus.

A great big lightbulb went off in my head. The reason I have such trouble is not a matter of pH, but rather we have very hard water here in Natick. Turns out that hard water is as bad as acidity when it comes to cooking beans. If I *steam* them, though, I eliminate the hardness problem since steam is pure water vapor... no minerals, no pH oddities, nothing. It's basically distilled water minus the condensation step.

Last night I soaked some dried chickpeas overnight. After soaking, they were swelled up but still plenty crunchy. I then put them in a raised basket in the pressure cooker with just a little water (about 3/4" in the bottom of the pot). Brought it to pressure and steamed for 45 mins.

Success! The beans were nice and soft and not at all gritty or crunchy. They made a WONDERFUL homemade hummus!

Now I'll see how well this works with other types of beans...