For a while, my wife and I have talked about putting up an occasional you tube on cooking basics. It seems we often run across people, who have no idea how to cook without opening a can. So this will be the first one, it is on cooking and softening old beans that you have had in your storage.
Softening old beans is pretty simple and it works most of the time.  Occasionally you may find some beans that are still too hard. Beans in this condition can be ground into bean flour and used in other recipes. In the future, we will cover other cooking basics, since they are no longer taught in schools and everyone seems to depend on prepared and packaged foods.
If you have lots of beans in your long term storage, you may want to stock extra baking soda. The U.S. Dry Beans Council recommends this method of softening old beans.
So if there is something you need to learn about cooking let us know and if we know the solution to your problem we will make a you tube on the subject
Howard
I cook my old beans in a pressure cooker. No baking soda is required.
7 – 8 minutes at 15 psi for most beans.
If they are still hard give them an extra couple of minutes.
The pressure cooker saves both time and energy ($$$).
Hangtown Frank
You asked about problems we have, well I don’t have problems baking bread because I can’t get up the courage to try. Maybe something on the most common mistakes made in bread making would be of a help to more people than just me.Thanks
I agree with Julia – I just don’t bake bread, or anything with yeast.
I love your video. Very helpful. I used the baking soda today on some ancient black beans. Now I’m enjoying some Cuban Black Beans 🙂 Thank you very much.
I had my beans in the crock pot on low ALL DAY…..still not done, like they should be. So I watched this and just added a tsp of Baking Soda to the crock. It got foamy. I thought “Oh No!”…. but left the beans to cook for another few hours on low while I went to town. When I came back they were great. And I know it’s not just cause they cooked longer, because I’ve been down the Old Bean Road more than a few times. Usually they just cook till they smell nasty and I throw them out.. No more of that 🙂 I wonder how baking soda does that….more research!!