[jdally987]

So wait, what would your quick & dirty advice be for the overall simplest way to achieve decent beans? I soak pintos (from the giant Walmart 20lb bags) overnight and into the instant pot for 22mins, but have noticed the same thing where if I get lazy and let them soak for almost 24hrs before cooking, they tend to come out way too firm and not satisfying at all. Wasn’t sure if it was just my imagination

[nanomonkey]

My first suggestion would be to cook it longer than 22 minutes. Instapots only go up to around 9 lbs of pressure on high, from what I read, so any pressure cooking recipe that is expecting a 10-15 lb pressure stove top cooker will need some extra time added. I cook my pintos and red beans for 30 minutes.

I would add a 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda to the water. I don't reuse my soak water, and I don't salt my water until after they have cooked. I may experiment with adding salt beforehand later, but I suspect that I'll need to add salt to the soak water too for this method.

Adding garlic and bay leafs are nice, but not necessary, as is an onion. For red beans I often blacken an onion on the stove and then throw it in whole in the pot with the beans.

[GhettoComputers]

For decent tasting beans don’t soak them at all, clean and boil them normally with some salt or bullion. Never soak your beans if you want them to taste good.

[nanomonkey]

I eat a lot of beans, and not soaking the beans has always ended up giving me gas. Do you not experience this?

As for flavor, I can't recall having more flavor coming from not soaking the beans. In fact I get more umami richness from a long soak.

[GhettoComputers]

Yes and soaking scientifically doesn't affect it either.

>Gray and his colleagues developed a method for extracting most of the alpha-galactosides from beans. The beans are boiled for three minutes (effectively killing the bean and allowing the sugars to pass through the cell walls), then allowed to stand for two hours. That water is poured off and the beans are covered and soaked for another two hours. Then they’re drained, covered and soaked another two hours before being drained and rinsed a final time.

>This method succeeded in ridding the beans of 90% of the troublesome sugars, but as you might expect, there was a side effect. “I used to do this blanch-soak method all the time at home and it works very nicely,” Gray says. “The one thing people who ate dinner with us have noted is that you do lose some flavor.”

>What’s more -- without going into details of what they measured and how -- suffice it to say that even with almost all of the alpha-galactosides gone, there wasn’t a consistent marked decrease in human flatulence.

>“We reduced the alpha-galactoside content by 90% but we haven’t done anything to dietary fiber,” says Gray, “and dietary fiber produces similar effects.”

https://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-dd-dont-soak-dried...

[laurencerowe]

Do you notice any improvement from soaking them overnight to just cooking them slightly longer in the instant pot?