Dry vs tinned pulses - which is cheaper?

Parsimonia

Your thoughts would be welcomed...

I have a mania for buying dried pulses (beans, peas and lentils) because I think they're such good value for money, but hubby says that once we've factored in 4-odd hours of cooking on our induction hob it's cheaper to open a can of pre-cooked ones.

I suggested we buy a stainless steel pressure cooker to reduce the cooking time, and he said it was a false economy because the money spent on the pressure cooker would buy us tons of tins of cooked pulses, and we'd still have some cooking time.

My argument is that if I spend about £40 on a pressure cooker, that's the monetary equivalent of about 55 cans of pulses (I like to buy good quality, organic ones). If the pressure cooker lasted a decade, hopefully, and I carry on picking up real bargains by buying dry pulses in bulk, I"ll make a long term saving.

What do you reckon? Is a pressure cooker a good investment, or should we stick with canned pulses?

terra_ferma

The cheapest I've paid recently for a can of pulses was £25 (special offer 4 for £1 S's ethic aisle, now at 3 for £1)
I use tinned because life's too short to be faffing about cooking a small amount of pulses at the time, but if I was batch cooking or cooking for a large family probably would.
I do think dried pulses are cheaper.
The cheapest I've seen them are ethnic shops, Indian brands mainly.

Pitlanepiglet

I'm still finding my way with dried beans rather than tinned ones. They don't all need long , separate cooking, I've been using haricot beans and I soak them over night, bring them to the boil for a few minutes and then throw them in my stew or whatever I'm cooking.

Of course it does depend what you are eating them with.

Honey_Bear

I have a 1.5 litre slow cooker (£10 BNIB) from a charity shop, and it cooks chickpeas from dry in 3 - 4 hours, depending on the size of the chickpea. For me, that seems a lot cheaper than buying a pressure cooker or tinned pulses long term. I use the SC for other things, too, but that's where it covers it's own cost. It also takes up a lot less space than a pressure cooker would.

Parsimonia

Well, I managed to pick up 2.5kg of dried marrowfat kabuki peas for £1.25 and 2.5kg of split fava (broad) beans for £1.40 just before Christmas, so those are types of bargain I'm talking about....

I use lots of pulses in cooking (mainly chickpeas, cannellini beans, green lentils and fava beans) and they're often a major part of the dish I'm cooking, and I do tend to batch cook.

Having said that, I also do buy canned pulses because often I decide to cook something spontaneously, and I'm too impatient to wait until the beans have soaked overnight...

For convenience you can't beat canned, but for economy I suspect dried work out the cheapest in the long run.

Pitlanepiglet

My pressure cooker (that I have still not been brave enough to use) came from a car boot sale for a few quid anyway so you don't have to buy an expecnsive one. The other option is to boil the pulses and then freeze them and use from frozen.

jpscloud

Since I ditched my full size cooker, I've never used my pressure cooker. Everything does wonderfully in the slow cooker, including pulses. I do brown rice in it too.

snoozer

Be careful cooking some beans in the slow cooker. Kidney beans need cooking at high temperature for ten minutes otherwise they will make you ill.

A.Penny.Saved

I'm also not convinced about SCs because they use far more energy(electric) over long periods of time than cooking with gas. They are one of those things that people jump on the bandwagon without really looking into it with any detail.

I would bet I would be better off cooking using a gas heated PC than using an electric SC and I wouldn't have to wait for so long for it to get there in the end.

OP you can use a PC to cook other things besides the pulses and every meal would save you energy. Apart from energy and speed your kitchen will get far less humidity from steam from pans.

poorly_scammo

Swings and roundabouts I think.

For small quantities I think canned work out cheaper but if you buy dried in bulk the overall cost is lower.

I do like the flavour of some dried beans over canned. Dried chickpeas taste nicer when cooked than canned but they are a bit more of a faff to use than opening a can.

Elliesmum

I think it is cheaper to use dried. I did a comparison and the dried equivalent of a 400g non-drained tin of chickpeas is 22p.

This does not factor in the cooking time/cost, I have a pressure cooker which takes 30 minutes to cook soaked peas.

This is a max saving of 11p a tin in theory and of course if you batch cook and then freeze pulses, your energy costs are even cheaper and you have that almost instant tin convenience as you can defrost from the freezer in the microwave.

HTHs

EM x