Real Food Kidney / Back Beans 64 oz

Phaseolus vulgaris, commonly known as kidney beans, is a legume or a common dried bean. The name comes from the human kidney due to its uncanny resemblance. Also, kidney beans contain protein equivalent to vegetables and are a rich source of fibre. They’re both vegan and an excellent substitute for meat products.

Furthermore, there are many long-term health benefits of consuming kidney beans, including, but not limited to, prevention of several types of cancers, weight loss, and regulating blood sugar. Kidney beans are affordable, healthy, and essential to a complete diet. Therefore, they are popular in developing countries.

Kidney beans contain many bioactive compounds, minerals, nutrients, and essential amino acids. It’s an all-in-one package for a healthy diet! There are several ways to consume kidney beans, whether in a curry or a dessert. Kidney beans are beneficial to human health, and using them as a meat substitute also helps reduce the environmental footprint created by raising cattle for meat.

This post has bean a long time coming. <— Ha! See what I did there? All puns aside, I love dried beans and they are so easy to prepare. I do enjoy the convenience of canned beans and there are some decent organic brands out there, yet there is something to be said about preparing them from scratch.

I’ve been trying to use fewer canned items and because they are cheap and basically low maintenance in the preparation department. I thought I’d share with you how to make your own beans so that you can use them in other dishes such as my Skillet Tamale Pie or you can add them to my taco meat for an even yummier taco salad or throw in some rice and make it a burrito bowl!

There are two schools for making beans.

Beans must be soaked
Beans don’t have to be soaked

I’ve made them both ways. (Gasp!)

Many people believe that the main reason to soak beans is to minimize gas, and while it’s true that soaking does help to remove the indigestible complex sugars (oligosaccharides) from the outer coating of the beans, rendering them easier for us to digest, it’s certainly not the primary reason to soak in my professional/chef opinion. Probably the most important reason for soaking is that lessens the cooking time which preserves more nutrients, so you get the benefits of all the proteins, vitamins and minerals in the beans.