# rock hard beans?



## dixiegal62 (Aug 18, 2007)

Ok I have a question for anyone who knows about Boston Baked beans. Decided the other day to make some just like my Grandmom's. Put great northern beans on to soak all night, got up the next morning and added salt pork, molasses and other ingredients.... put all into a bean pot and preceded to cook low and slow all day in the oven..... the smell was heavenly took me back to my Grandmom's kitchen BUT after 8 hours in the oven beans where still rock hard and hadn't absorbed the liquid.... ended up throwing them in the crockpot to cook more through the night and still rock hard this morning.

Now I've cooked beans plenty of times, sometimes without even soaking but have never had this happen. Ill admit I didn't follow a recipe... I just added from my memory... salt pork I had seared in a skillet first, onion.... molasses, ground mustard, salt, pepper I just threw these in a bowl and adjusted until I got the taste I remembered, I also added some ketchup for a bit of zing. I layered the pork onions and beans in a bean pot and poured the sauce over and added a bit of water I had soaked the beans in to make sure they didn't dry out. Any ideas what I did wrong?


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## MDKatie (Dec 13, 2010)

Any type of acid (vinegar, tomatos in any form, etc) will stop the cooking. Next time try cooking them with just spices, then add in your tomato product/acid when they're tender.


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## Vosey (Dec 8, 2012)

I has this happen once with chili when I tried to cook the beans in the chili! The other factor is how old your beans were.


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## Lisa in WA (Oct 11, 2004)

Agree with Vosey about the age of your beans. Older beans stay hard.


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## tlrnnp67 (Nov 5, 2006)

Never add salt to beans until they are tender. They will stay rock hard. Season with salt after they are soft, then cook for a little longer to meld flavors.


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## CraterCove (Jan 24, 2011)

I have been learning how to cook from dried stores and the big things I have learned about beans are these: Soak them before cooking them (you can keep the soaking liquid for adding to stocks), never add _anything_ to the beans until they have cooked soft. As mentioned above anything that throws the ph off will affect the beans, making them stay crunchy forever and very definitely no salt. If you are worried about flavor then I would season after soft and leave the beans overnight in the fridge to let the flavors 'marry' as they put it in those fancy cooking shows.

Also, yes older beans can take longer, in my limited experience.


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## eggman (Mar 4, 2007)

I had this problem. Turned out to be my water. I have a Berkley water purifier I put the water thru first-took care of the problem.


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## suitcase_sally (Mar 20, 2006)

I have heard that hard watr affects (effects?) beans, but my water is so hard I have to chisle it out of the faucet, so I'm not sure that is the problem. The OP says she's cooked beans many times and had no problems.

My first thought is, in the morning you can look at the beans and tell whether they have absorbed the water that they should have. If not, you can cook the beans in a pressure cooker (or so I've heard on HT. I agree that perhaps they were too old.


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## my3boys (Jan 18, 2011)

After soaking overnight, I always bring the beans to a boil, then simmer for an hour before adding the other ingredients and turning into the crockpot. Don't know if that would have helped with older beans or not.


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## okiemom (May 12, 2002)

old beans did that to me once. yuck.


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## dixiegal62 (Aug 18, 2007)

Sorry it took me so long to respond. I tried them again a few days ago, boiled until almost done added ingredients then slow baked Much better but still a bit hard, guess next time I'll cook all the way before adding anything, but I was worried they would end up mushy. Thanks for the help.


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## Raeven (Oct 11, 2011)

Pressure cook them. It won't matter how old they are, or if they have been salted. Works every time.


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## oregon woodsmok (Dec 19, 2010)

When I make baked beans from raw beans, I crock pot the beans by themselves overnight. Then I mix up all the ingredients and into the oven to turn them into baked beans.

I've have problems with a couple of different bags of dried beans just the past 2 years. They seem to be waterproof, no matter what is done to them. I suspect it is one of those new and improved machine harvestable varieties that got evaluated for yield and harvestability and none of the scientists bothered to try cooking any of them.

Anyway, cook the beans first. They will be tender for sure and if it is a defective batch of dry beans, you won't have to throw away all your expensive ingredients with the beans. It's not like bacon or molasses are cheap any more that you can just throw them away..


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