[Stoves] SPAM: haybox cooking

Erin Rasmussen erin at trmiles.com
Thu Apr 30 12:54:16 CDT 2015


Hi Andrew, 
All of the other comments are great. I've used haybox cooking for beans, and
I've found that different types of beans (and differently aged beans) take
different simmering times. Some of the variation is predictable based on the
size of the bean, but some of the variation depends on the age of the beans
and their relative humidity.  For example, this year's beans take less time
to simmer than aged beans. The point is to simmer the beans (or rolling boil
them) so that they're about 1/3 of the way cooked. Then put them in the
haybox. If you keep them at temp, they should be ok. I like a real straw
haybox cooker, it's a lot easier to put the old straw out in the garden,
wash the liner, and restart with fresh than to go through the effort of
maintaining plastic.  

At my house I also discovered that I could grow a lot of really exciting
bacteria in partially cooled bean water. Your experience with this will vary
with your local microbe population. I tend to err on the side of caution and
reuse the bean water in the garden. Either start with fresh water and boil
for long enough kill pathogens, or just start fresh all together.

Adding rice to beans is delicious. :-) 

You don't want to add any salt to your beans until after they cook. There's
an old wives tale about them toughening up the texture that's probably true.
I'd add herbs or sautéed garlic at the end. I also really like malted
vinegar at the end when you serve the beans, it wakes up the flavor. 

Have fun,
Erin Rasmussen
erin at trmies.com  

-----Original Message-----
From: Stoves [mailto:stoves-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of
Andrew Heggie
Sent: Wednesday, April 29, 2015 1:42 AM
To: Discussion of biomass cooking stoves
Subject: SPAM: [Stoves] haybox cooking

Hi all

I've been playing with cooking kidney beans and wonder if any cooks out
there have any insights in using retained heat cookers. I've gone slightly
hitech in that I have cut a recess in some wall insulation board  for the
pot to sit in. As I'm only using a cupful of dried beans, pre soaked for 24
hours I think my chief mistake is not having enough food mass to retain the
heat  and so I'm having to re boil the beans after 5 hours.  Unfortunately
my data logger will not function above 80C and I'm unsure at what
temperature cooking effectively stops.

My question is does the boiled water have to be discarded from the beans?

What I am wondering is could rice be added and the whole contents be
reboiled and left as the rice cooks?

Any suggestions for non meat, low sodium,  flavourings to enhance the taste?

Andrew

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