It is difficult to find a family that does not drool over the thought of beans in a pot, oven-baked beans or beans with sausage. Beans are one of the most beloved legumes and are widely used in cooking.
However, if you are a beginner cook and have not cooked beans before, you will find that cooking beans is not an easy job at all. Patience and the desire to learn are required. And most importantly - quality old beans.
It is difficult to give an exact answer to the question, how long do beans need to be boiled for, because it depends on a number of factors. First of all, it depends on how old the old beans are, whether they have been pre-soaked in water or not, whether they are boiled on their own or in the company of vegetables and whether something else is added to the boiling water - such as baking soda, ordinary salt, etc.
Soaking the beans in water beforehand shortens the boiling time and after 6-8 hours in water, the white beans would be fully cooked in just 50 minutes.
Approximately for about the same time, pre-soaked red beans will be fully boiled.
In case you forget to soak the beans in water, the cooking time increases and you will need 1.5 - 2 hours to boil the beans.
If you do not have that much time, you can try to resort to the help of various tricks in the kitchen, using a pressure cooker, oil., Brandy or baking soda.
In a pressure cooker, the beans will cook for about 45-60 minutes.
Many cooks believe that they can speed up the process by adding baking soda or brandy to the water, but there is no definite evidence for this. On the other hand, it is certainly known that if you add salt to the water, you will significantly slow down the boiling process. The same goes for adding tomatoes.
Sometimes the beans just don't cook, no matter how long you boil them for, just because they're too old. In that case all you can do is toss the beans and toss some pork steaks in the pan.
