More on Beans

I made another pot of beans with the pressure cooker last night, as discussed previously, but after soaking the beans I discovered I didn't have any onions--which was a problem.  I have never made beans without fresh onion, but I decided to give dried minced onion a try.  I had some of that in the pantry.

Normally I put in two onions, but the amount in two onions varies.  It's probably usually about two to three cups of diced onion.  Usually, dried vegetables and herbs seem to rehydrate to about a 3:1 ratio; one teaspoon dried equals about one tablespoon fresh.  So I tossed in 3/4 cups of minced onion.  I also added more water.  Normally I put the water level right at the top of the beans (sometimes slightly more if cooking in a non-pressurized pot), but I added quite a bit more because I knew the dehydrated onion would absorb water, rather than increase the water level as fresh onions do when they cook down.

In the end, I put a bit too much extra water in.  Another alternative would've been to rehydrate them before adding to the pot, but that seems to be unnecessary.  The picture at right shows the pot after I had scooped out a generous portion for dinner.  The flavor was okay. A whole cup would have worked, too, but the results with 3/4 cup were fine. I wouldn't mind doing them this way again (and probably will; I have more minced onion that I haven't been using much of and I need to learn to use it for more than marinade). Minced onion keeps for a long time if properly packaged.

I could also substitute dehydrated / minced garlic, though I have no experience with it.  The only dry form I have used is powdered.  The bacon would be another problem.  It's an important component in the recipe and I'm not immediately aware of non-fresh or frozen alternatives.  I do know about canned bacon, but that's already cooked and might not work very well.  I may try it sometime just to see how it goes.  This time, by the way, I used thick-cut bacon, which was much easier to slice into small pieces than normal thin-cut bacon is.  I dropped it back down to four ounces, and that was fine (both in terms of flavoring and deterring foaming).

For the record:  It took 25 minutes after the cooking time ended for the pressure to drop in the cooker.  The guidelines for beans in the manual say the pressure should drop on its own rather than via venting.

Lastly, I ran across a site that has nutritional information for generally wholesome foods; pintos are on their list:  World's Healthiest Foods-Pinto Beans.