A Pot of Beans, Properly
Dried beans, an onion, and a little time will give you something a can never can: tender beans seasoned all the way through, sitting in a broth worth saving. Here's how we do it.
A pot of beans is the most forgiving thing I cook, and for a long time it was also the most disappointing. I'd open the lid expecting magic and find pale, mealy beans floating in dishwater. The fix turned out to be almost embarrassingly simple: cook them long enough, salt them generously, and give the pot something savory to talk to while it simmers.
Once you have a pot like this, dinner more or less takes care of itself for days. Beans and broth over toast. Beans with a fried egg. Beans blended into soup, or fried hard in olive oil until the edges crackle. The recipe below is the foundation; everything after it is improvisation.
*Soaking is optional — see the note below. The cook time runs a little longer without it.
Start with decent, recent beans
Beans don't last forever. A bag that's been in the back of the cupboard for three years will never get fully tender no matter how long you cook it. Buy from somewhere with decent turnover, and if you can find beans with a harvest date on the bag, even better. Within reason, fresher dried beans cook faster and end up creamier.
Any medium bean works here — cannellini, great northern, navy, pinto, borlotti. I'm using white beans because their broth turns especially silky, but the method is the same across the board.
On soaking, salt, and other arguments
People will tell you soaking is essential and people will tell you it's pointless. The honest answer is that it helps a little and hurts nothing. Soaked beans cook faster and a touch more evenly. If you forget — I usually do — you can cook them straight from dry; just add 30 to 45 minutes and a little extra water.
The salt myth is the one worth killing. Salting the cooking water does not make beans tough. Tough beans come from old beans, hard water, or simply not cooking them long enough. Salt early and salt well; it's the only way to season a bean all the way to its center rather than leaving you with a bland interior and a salty broth.
A bean is done not when it's soft but when it's creamy — when one pressed against the roof of your mouth dissolves rather than resists. — how we know it's time
Ingredients
- 1 lb dried white beans (about 2.5 cups)
- 1 yellow onion, halved
- 1 head garlic, halved crosswise
- 3 tbsp olive oil, plus more to finish
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 parmesan rind (optional, recommended)
- 1 tbsp kosher salt, plus more to taste
- 10 cups water, plus more as needed
- Black pepper and lemon, to finish
Instructions
- If you have time, cover the beans with several inches of water and soak 8 hours or overnight, then drain. If not, skip straight to the next step and plan for a longer simmer.
- Put the beans in a large heavy pot with the onion, garlic, olive oil, bay leaves, and parmesan rind. Add the water — it should cover the beans by about two inches — and bring to a boil.
- Once boiling, skim off any foam that rises, then turn the heat down to a bare, lazy simmer. You want the surface barely trembling, not a rolling boil, which can split the beans before they soften.
- Add the salt. Cover partway and cook, stirring now and then, for 1.5 to 2 hours. Check the water level occasionally and top up with hot water if the beans start to peek above the surface.
- Begin tasting at the 75-minute mark. The beans are ready when they're completely tender and creamy inside, with no chalky center. Old beans may take well over two hours — keep going.
- Fish out and discard the onion, garlic skins, bay leaves, and rind. Taste the broth and add more salt until it tastes like soup you'd happily eat on its own. Finish each bowl with a thread of olive oil, black pepper, and a squeeze of lemon.
Get the most out of the pot
- Save the broth. That cloudy liquid is the best part. Keep the beans stored in it so they don't dry out, and use it as a base for soups and braises.
- Make them crispy. Drain a cupful and fry in a film of hot olive oil, pressing down, until the bottoms blister. Salt and eat with the crackliest ones first.
- Freeze in portions. Beans and broth freeze beautifully for up to three months. Cool fully, then freeze flat in bags.
- No parmesan rind? A splash of soy sauce or a spoon of miso stirred in at the end adds a similar savory depth.
If you make this once you'll stop buying canned beans for anything that matters. They cost a fraction as much, taste incomparably better, and the broth alone is worth the wait. Keep a few bags of dried beans in the cupboard and you're never really without dinner.
Daniel Okafor
Daniel tests every recipe on The Plain Table — once exactly as written, once the way a tired person actually would. He has strong feelings about properly seasoned bean broth and keeps a testing spreadsheet the rest of the team is not allowed to touch.
