Comments on: A Gigante Bowl of Comfort

By: Tamara

Tamara — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 19:43:15 +0000

Thanks for the great idea! I happened upon a bag of corona beans today so I bought them and will try them tonight!

By: Solange Rebecca Echeverria

Solange Rebecca Echeverria — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 03:19:37 +0000

Italian Corona Beans work just as well-as a matter of fact, hard to tell the difference! Available ironically @ Whole Foods!

By: Caffettiera

Caffettiera — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:41:10 +0000

My mother always adds a fresh tomato or two to borlotti beans, who actually don’t have a tough skin. She always soaks beans, even though my grandmother often uses something like your quick soaking trick, and the tomato as well. I am quite positive that you can cook fresh beans in tomato sauce because I remember it as a typical summer dish. I don’t use fresh tomatoes that much because the ones available here won’t actually lend any flavour, sadly. So, who knows? Maybe you have to rehydrate the beans before letting them touch the acid…

By: Tamara

Tamara — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 14:55:52 +0000

Oh, the controversy! So, the salt thing appears to ve polarizing. Some sources warn you to stay away from adding it to the cooking water for the same reason as acid–because it will harden the bean. Other sources claim that this is a huge myth and that salting the water actually flavors the beans, has no effect on toughness, and is preferable. Honestly, I don’t know who is right. The best I can come up with is: if you live somewhere that doesn’t have hard water, a little salt in the cooking water probably won’t hurt. But when a timely dinner is at stake, I tend to play it safe and avoid salting the water just in case.

The acid thing is more interesting to me. A tomato in the cooking water, you say?? Fascinating! Tomato is absolutely acid… does your family do this will all bean varieties, or just certain ones? After a long soak or not? All I know is that the one time I tried to make a chili in my slow cooker and I tossed in dry (unsoaked) lima beans along with some canned tomatoes, the lima beans never softened. Ever. Even after, like, 8 hours. So I learned my lesson and keep the beans away from acid until they’ve been properly tenderized.

(PS: your blog’s photography is beautiful!)

By: caffettiera

caffettiera — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 21:24:32 +0000

Thanks for the interesting post and the links to amazing bean varieties. I always cook beans from dried, or even better, fresh, straight from the pod (even if I have found fresh beans, ‘borlotti’ variety, only in Italy, not sure if they sell them elsewhere). I find myself perfectly in the feeling of going to bed happy, because you managed to multitask yet another food preparation .

I am very interested about your note on avoiding contact with acid substances: I have read in some cookbooks to avoid adding salt to cooking beans, least they become tough. Actually the traditional way to cook them in my house is with a tomato in the boiling water. Is it acid in any way? Or does it just leave umami, as some seaweed does? Also some vegetarian cookbooks recommend using wakame for cooking beans.

By: Georgia

Georgia — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 05:15:00 +0000

Long live the Greeks! Opa!