The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

missychrissy

Oo you have many more dried ingredients than I do. I sometimes branch out and have used chick peas, butter beans, green split peas etc but I’m not a great fan of cous cous or quinoa. However, anything that stores well for long periods is well worth trying.

Si_Clist

elaine241 said:

I will be adding Borlotti beans to my stash as I am growing about 12 plants to see how they get on in our growing conditions. At the moment they look very happy and are producing lovely pale purple flowers.

Been (bean?) growing those for several years for drying and they now form the bulk of our winter dried bean stash.  They are just so scrummy!  They grow OK down here (slightly sarf of London) although we find that some years they just don't want to produce flowers low down the stems, only towards the top, which obviously reduces the yield.  Worth sticking with though in our opinion for the great taste

daz378

Finished work today at 2pm  stayed on the bus to manchester... picked up vitamin tabs from  holl and barat  and 2 t shirts  from primark   alas i have gone from x large to xx large....not too busy   my first    out of area shopping trip..since lockdown   ..need  trainers but will get them  locally ....stay safe

missychrissy

Si Clist - how do you dry your beans? My youngest son has just built me some raised beds and once the lifted turf has broken down in them I should be planting in the spring. I didn’t think of growing beans to dry but it sounds an attractive idea.

ivyleaf

Elaine  A French friend once made us a cake using potato flour when we were visiting her.  It was very nice but she wouldn't tell us what it was made with until we'd all tried it and liked it  She said the British were very unadventurous when it came to trying out different flours.

3secondmemory

I’m going to add pearl barley to my cupboard store after reading this – I can look forward to a good old Irish stew in the slow cooker 

missychrissy

3secondmemory said:

I’m going to add pearl barley to my cupboard store after reading this – I can look forward to a good old Irish stew in the slow cooker

2 of my sons recently told me how much they used to like barley in soups and casseroles. Barley is great with lamb but it is also really comforting in a beef stew too.

Si_Clist

missychrissy said:

Si Clist - how do you dry your beans?

The dead boring old-fashioned way - we spread them out on trays and leave 'em in the sun, or if the weather's iffy, in the house.  The test for dryness is high-tech though: we put one of them on a hard surface and whack it with a hammer.  If it shatters and bits fly everywhere, it's dry, but if it even looks like it's thinking about squashing a bit before it cracks, it's not ready yet.  Once dry, we just keep them in wombled glass jars with ordinary wombled twist-to-open lids, along with a bit of paper with the date on.

It was actually buying a packet of dried red kidney beans from Wait-in-rows 6-7 years ago that started us drying our own.  In our experience DIY ones are streets ahead for quality and they keep just fine, although having said that, we've so far always scoffed ours before they're more than two years old.

HTH

GreyQueen

I grow broad beans, which have the fun habit of ripening all at once. Freezer space is pretty limited (50 litres) so I dry the rest. I let mine do most of the drying out on the stem, then catch the dried pods just before they unzip and drop the beans. Then, like Si Clist, they're spread out on trays to make sure they're thoroughly dry. I keep them in glass jars and soak them for 24 hours before cooking. Cooked, they are eaten in salads or added to soups (am a dead boring cook). If I want some seed beans, I just get some out of the kitchen jars, poke holes in the soil, and off they go. These beans are known as Nan's Beans, as they were saved for decades by my late grandparents. Like true country people, with little money, they didn't spend on anything as frivilous as fresh seed every year. They are clearly more than one variety as they are a mix of 4 and 6 seeds to the pod, and come out at different heights. We also have Nan's runner beans, which are an unknown variety, often purple podded. Very tasty, I gave some to the local greengrocer as a curiousity, and he remarked on their good flavour.

Si_Clist

GreyQueen said:

I ...soak them for 24 hours before cooking ... If I want some seed beans, I just get some out of the kitchen jars, poke holes in the soil, and off they go.

Same here, except we mainly use ours as a substitute for Quorn pieces in pseudocurries and suchlike, by which I mean meals consisting of beans in some cheapo cooking sauce or other out of a jar, with chips, pasta, rice or couscous.  (That's actually pretty exotic fare by our standards.  We're heaters-up-of-stuff rather than cooks.)

Where we differ from GQ on the cooking though is we soak our beans overnight, then in the morning chuck out the water, put the beans in the pan with the two side handles that the steamers sit on, fill it to an inch off the top with boiling water, then boil 'em for a few minutes.

We then put a flat lid on and transfer the pot to our slow cooker, which consists of two beanbags.  Pan full of beans goes on top of one bean bag (note bean theme going on here) and the other bean bag goes on top.  It's basically a hay box but with bean bags.  8 hours later, they're cooked if they're broad or Borlotti beans, overcooked if they're a smaller bean.  Total energy usage/cooking cost one full electric kettle boiled plus five minutes on the gas hob.