[Stoves] SPAM: haybox cooking

[ajheggie at gmail.com]

[Default] On Thu, 30 Apr 2015 10:54:16 -0700,Erin Rasmussen
<erin at trmiles.com> wrote:

>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. 


Thanks and Dean has put some figures on it which I can easily test,
>
>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.

I have also had an admonition form Frans Peeters that the water could
be contaminated with herbicide plus undercooked beans are poisonous,
This I have taken to be an evolutionary trait to avoid predation.
>
>Adding rice to beans is delicious. :-) 

Yes and my thought was that cooking rice is also a good insulator, so
adding rice at the end of cooking and co cooking the beans and rice in
the same haybox seemed logical.
>
>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. 

I thought garlic was best at bringing out the flavour of other tastes?

Anyway Frans has also warned not to decrease salt intake below 6
grammes/day, in my case I suspect I eat this in other prepared food
during the day.

AJH