Thread: Re-dried beans

On 27-Mar-2010, Silvar Beitel <[email protected]> wrote:

> What do you get if you take cooked beans and dehydrate them? Do they
> go back to being rock-hard like the originals or will they rehydrate
> quickly and be soft? (If the latter, they'd be a good ingredient for
> camping/backpacking, being light-weight, no refrigeration needed,
> minimal fuel to cook.)

In 1968 I was a medic in the US Army in the Republic of Vietnam and served
with a recon unit of the 1st Cavalry. Our rations were a bit different than
those of the typical soldier; instead of C-rations (canned stuff), we
received freeze-dried rations because they were lighter, thus we could
carry more and need resupply less often.

Among the meal assortment was one germain to your questions; Chili with
Beans. The idea was to open the pack, pour in water, stir it around and let
it sit long enough for the meal to absorb the water. No matter what I did
to prepare the Chili with Beans meal, I could never get the beans to soften,
they were always crunchy. The most extreme method of preparation was to
pick every single bean out of the meal, put them in my canteen cup with the
water before putting the cup over a heat tab (or C-4) to bring the water to
a boil.

Then beans were never again soft as cooked beans should be - they always
were crunchy, like a peanut.

So, if you are going to dehydrate beans and want they to ever be soft again,
my opinion is to not dry them thoroughly - take them only to
dried-apricot/prune/raisin level of dry. Of course, that may not be so good
at preserving the beans, but at least you stand a chance they won't crunch.
--
Change Cujo to Juno in email address.

Silvar Beitel wrote:
>
> What do you get if you take cooked beans and dehydrate them? Do they
> go back to being rock-hard like the originals or will they rehydrate
> quickly and be soft? (If the latter, they'd be a good ingredient for
> camping/backpacking, being light-weight, no refrigeration needed,
> minimal fuel to cook.)


You can buy dried refried bean mix and dried bean soup (split pea, black
bean, etc.) dried soup mixes that do exactly this. I used to buy them
in bulk from a whole foods coop. I think they slice the beans thinly or
pulverize them so they rehydrate well. I think it would be difficult
and/or time-consuming to rehydrate a whole dried bean.

I have bought dehydrated fruits and veggies from Walton Feed
(waltonfeed.com) and they have soup mixes, too, but not the kind I
mentioned above, and their bouillon to me is yucky, although their
vegetable soup mix -- veggies and cubed potatoes -- is fantastic.