Batch Cooking and Freezing Beans?

Memory_Girl

Toxic_Lemon wrote: »

I have to say, if you're going to cook pulses and beans in a pressure cooker, why would you freeze them? They only take 30-40 minutes for the most hardy of beans. And it's still cheaper to cook your own then buy a tin, even at 28p.

Cos I is lazy :rotfl:

I make hummus for sons packed lunch(from frozen beans in the morning) - or want some kidney beans to bulk out a salad - or a quick topping for a baked potato at lunchtime.

Usually have chick peas, kidney and haricot in the freezer for quick additons

MG

nuatha

Red Dragon Pie (serves 4)
150g Aduki beans, soaked overnight, boiled 20mins and allowed to cool in the liquor then drained.
1.5kg potatoes, boiled then mashed
1-2 Onions, diced
1-2 sticks celery, finely chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
2 carrots, diced or grated
1 red pepper, diced
1 red chilli, chopped (optional)
100g mushrooms sliced (optional)
Tin of chopped tomatoes, or carton of passata (approx 400g)
Mushroom ketchup or Vegetarian Worcestershire sauce, large splash
Ground Paprika,

Fry the onion until just turning translucent, add celery and garlic and fry for 3 minutes. Add the carrots and other veg and fry for another 5 minutes.
Put the veg in the bottom of a large casserole, add the aduki beans and stir well to combine, add the chopped tomatoes/passata and stir well. Check seasoning, adjust to taste with mushroom ketchup/worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. Cover with mashed potato, sprinkle with paprika. Bake for 45 minutes at 180C.

I now use Thriftqueen's vegetable hash as the basis for this sort of dish. I often add more onion and carrots than shown above. Basically its a chuck it in rather than exact quantities sort of dish. If cooking for vegetarians rather than vegans, then grated cheese makes a good topping.
HTH

Justamum

nuatha wrote: »

I now use Thriftqueen's vegetable hash as the basis for this sort of dish.

I do that too! Except I have to chop as small as I can by hand as I don't have a food processor (on my wish list!) so it can take me quite a long time. I also don't have little boxes to put mine in. What I do is chop up one onion, one carrot and a stick of celery for each portion, and put them in a small plastic bag (sandwich bags are good). If I have peppers or courgettes I bung them in too. These then all go into a 9 litre lock n lock type box on a shelf in my freezer (to stop the whole freezer smelling of onion).

Toxic_Lemon

Justamum wrote: »

I do that too! Except I have to chop as small as I can by hand as I don't have a food processor (on my wish list!) so it can take me quite a long time.

You need something like this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Duronic-CH260-Compact-Chopper-Processor/dp/B000OZZR04/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1335126946&sr=8-1

nuatha

Justamum wrote: »

I do that too! Except I have to chop as small as I can by hand as I don't have a food processor (on my wish list!) so it can take me quite a long time. I also don't have little boxes to put mine in. What I do is chop up one onion, one carrot and a stick of celery for each portion, and put them in a small plastic bag (sandwich bags are good). If I have peppers or courgettes I bung them in too. These then all go into a 9 litre lock n lock type box on a shelf in my freezer (to stop the whole freezer smelling of onion).

I really wouldn't like to do this by hand, I'm afraid I let the food processor take the burden. I ended up buying several sets of plastic storage boxes from ikea as the cheapest way to get small tupperware style containers (to avoid everything smelling of onions) the larger sizes were a bonus.
Good luck on achieving your wish, I would sooner give up my Kenwood Chef than my food processor.

Justamum

nuatha wrote: »

I would sooner give up my Kenwood Chef than my food processor.

I want both

nuatha

Justamum wrote: »

I want both

Food processor came from Lidl's some 6 or 7 years back, when OH suggested I might like a Magimix for Christmas I turned it down as I can't see the point in replacing something that works really well (now I'm just keeping fingers crossed the motor doesn't die - sod's law and all that).
My Chef was a car boot find, £5, including bowl and the three mixing tools. Two spare bowls came from a friend clearing out a relative's house. I'm on the look out for grater attachments, but they never seem to be affordable when I have the cash - and the processor does that well, so its harder to justify the spend.

Toxic_Lemon

nuatha wrote: »

I really wouldn't like to do this by hand, I'm afraid I let the food processor take the burden. I ended up buying several sets of plastic storage boxes from ikea as the cheapest way to get small tupperware style containers (to avoid everything smelling of onions) the larger sizes were a bonus.
Good luck on achieving your wish, I would sooner give up my Kenwood Chef than my food processor.

I bought the Kenwood Chef food processor attachment so that the Magimix could be made redundant and sold, although now I can't bear to eBay the Magimix, so a slight flaw in my cunning plan!

(am trying to force myself. )