You Don’t Actually Have to Soak Beans Overnight

It’s pretty unanimously agreed that dried beans taste better than cannedsoak beans, or if you even should) comes with its own round of debate. Sure, there are all the popular points of contention (to salt or not to salt), but there are plenty of seemingly minute concerns that draw no shortage of passion (rinse the beans or no?).

Plenty of people have fierce opinions on the “right way to cook beans,” so we took the conversation where it belongs: to the kitchen. We grabbed a dozen bags of pinto beans

The Epicurious Myth-Busting Guide to Cooking Beans

Do you actually need to soak your beans? The idea behind soaking dried beans is that it makes the beans cook more quickly and evenly. It’s also been posited that soaking beans breaks down some of their complex sugars, making them easier to digest. Because every stomach is different, we didn’t test for digestibility. Testing the soaking theory, however, was simple: We covered 8 oz. pinto beans with 8 cups water and left the container on the counter overnight. The next day we placed those beans and their soaking liquid in a pot. In a second pot, we placed an equal amount of dried unsoaked beans and fresh water. Both pots were set over a medium-high flame and tested periodically. Results: The soaked beans did finish cooking first—but the unsoaked pinto beans were finished just 10 minutes later. Our feeling: Why bother?

Takeaway: Don’t bother soaking beans.

Myth 2: Dry beans must be cooked in fresh water.

After our first test, this myth became a moot point—if you don’t soak your beans, you’re always going to cook in fresh water. But die-hard bean soakers will still want to know whether they should drain their soaked beans in a colander and refill the pot with fresh water, or cook their beans in the water they were soaked in. When we tested this, the beans cooked in the soaking liquid were much more flavorful, had a prettier, darker color, and had a more pleasant texture.

Takeaway: You don’t have to soak your beans; but if you do, cook the beans in their soaking liquid.

Myth 3: If you don’t soak overnight, you should at least quick-soak.

Man, people are just really attached to this idea of the presoak. The so-called quick soak is a method where you place beans in water, bring them to a boil, turn off the heat, and then let the beans soak in the water for an hour. We tried the quick-soak method, and although the cooking time didn’t vary much (the quick-soaked beans cooked just 5 minutes faster than the overnight soaked ones and 15 minutes faster than the no-soak beans), the flavor was our favorite of the bunch.

Takeaway: Quick-soak, but do it for the flavor.

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