Buying Inexpensive Beans: A Way to Reduce Your Grocery Bill

While grocery shopping, I saw something that just blew my mind. A jar of Great Northern Beans (navy beans) was more than $2.50. These are the beans that are typically used for good bean soup.

Beans, or legumes, are a nutritional powerhouse. They have protein but no cholesterol, unlike meat. Beans and rice make a complete protein and can be a great substitute for meat, especially if your food budget is tight. Beans are also high in folate, iron, potassium and magnesium.

Beans are inexpensive if purchased dried. Buying precooked, or canned beans, can be a bit more costly. You can easily pay over 79 cents for a can of beans, but get the equivalent of four or five cans out of a bag of dried beans. Needless to say, seeing about fifty cents worth of beans costing so much appalled me.

You have several options for cooking dried beans. If you are an organized person, you can soak the beans the night before in preparation for their cooking.

The less prepared, or those who wake up and say, "bean soup sounds good!' have a few options as well. You can boil the beans for a few minutes, and let them sit for an hour. Then they can be added to your favorite crock pot recipe with boiling water and cooked on low for 8-10 hours.

I am the kind of person who will have no idea what I am going to make for dinner until I open the cabinet and a bag of kidney beans falls out. Chili it is!

Fortunately, I have a pressure cooker. This is by far my preferred way of cooking dried beans. I still have to boil them and let them sit for an hour. However, after that the cook time will be under or at 30 minutes. It all depends on the bean you are cooking. Kidney and navy beans take 30 minutes, but black eyed peas only take 10 minutes. Timing is crucial. If you follow the directions in the instruction manual that came with your pressure cooker, you should have nearly perfect beans. You do have to pay attention to when the control on top starts to jiggle. There is nothing worse than taking the lid off after cooling the cooker down and realizing that each kidney bean burst into what resembled a flower (I didn't use a timer).