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Just out of curiosity, do you eat so many beans you want to buy them in bulk, can them, and then rotate/consume them all before the canning preservation gets sketchy?
My wife uses dried beans to make bean flour, which she uses to make bread, pizza, cookies, snack crackers and chocolate fudge. For eight years we did a demonstration, all three days, at our local Ag fair, sharing recipes and handing out samples.
I also love refried beans, and chili with beans.
About five years ago, my body decided to become diabetic. My doctor wanted to start me taking diabetes drugs. But I wanted to try to see if I could control it with diet. I gave up wheat, potatoes and rice, it knocked my A1C down, and I do not have diabetes.
Which style of long term storage do you think will last longer?
Canning preservation?
or
Dried beans in the gunny sack you bought them in?
Have you ever heard of the 'Blue zones'?
Cultures are being studied for abnormally long living citizens. Scientists have isolated 6 communities where residents normally live for over 120 years. One of the commonalities among those groups is their diet is over 50% beans.
My wife uses dried beans to make bean flour, which she uses to make bread, pizza, cookies, snack crackers and chocolate fudge. For eight years we did a demonstration, all three days, at our local Ag fair, sharing recipes and handing out samples.
I also love refried beans, and chili with beans.
About five years ago, my body decided to become diabetic. My doctor wanted to start me taking diabetes drugs. But I wanted to try to see if I could control it with diet. I gave up wheat, potatoes and rice, it knocked my A1C down, and I do not have diabetes.
Which style of long term storage do you think will last longer?
Canning preservation?
or
Dried beans in the gunny sack you bought them in?
Have you ever heard of the 'Blue zones'?
Cultures are being studied for abnormally long living citizens. Scientists have isolated 6 communities where residents normally live for over 120 years. One of the commonalities among those groups is their diet is over 50% beans.
The "blue zone" myth was debunked at least 5 years ago as a bunch of cherry-picked data by people with a specific agenda.
Also, only one person, Jeanne Calment, a French woman who lived from 1875 to 1997, has been verified to have lived past 120 years. Her age was 122 years and 164 days.
I had similar thoughts when I read the OP, and with this being in the Preparedness forum I question why dried beans are even being canned in bulk at all? It's one of the few food products that can be safely kept in dry storage for years or even decades and still be edible. Cook beans on demand, as people have for hundreds of years. If the OP is that fond of home cooked beans, they can be prepared within an hour in a pressure cooker.
You summarized that better than I did. The beans will last longer properly stored/dried than they will if canned.
Which style of long term storage do you think will last longer?
Canning preservation?
or
Dried beans in the gunny sack you bought them in?
No one is storing food long term in the gunny sacks they came in. Sometimes they come in woven plastic sacks. I've stored dried beans in 3-5 gallon plastic buckets, rodents or climate have never gotten to them. After five years the beans were edible and some even sprouted in the garden when sowed.
Canning is fine, but takes huge amounts of time, water, and energy. It makes more sense to reserve canning for perishable or other products with zero shelf life.
If you ever have to move or vacate quickly, your heavy canned goods will quickly become a burden or a loss.
Also, only one person, Jeanne Calment, a French woman who lived from 1875 to 1997, has been verified to have lived past 120 years. Her age was 122 years and 164 days.
I remember reading about this woman, where she signed a contigency contract on her apartment in 1965, when she was 90 years old, the landlord and lawyer assuming she would kick the bucket soon enough so they would benefit. They both died before she did. She smoked and drank wine, as a French woman does...no beans about it.
Who eats 50% beans in their diet? That sounds like a gas attack.
Just out of curiosity, do you eat so many beans you want to buy them in bulk, can them, and then rotate/consume them all before the canning preservation gets sketchy?
The beans you describe are toxic. They can be rendered safer by thoroughly cooking them, but humans did not evolve to eat them or any other plants with toxic levels of lectins and cyanide.
If one thinks about it, most of the foods we eat cannot be consumed without applying some form of technology to them, whether its by cooking, fermentation, or some other process. Likewise, our cave dwelling ancestors never painted scenes of humans eating salads on the walls.
I consider most plants to be famine foods, especially the ones that would have killed our technology-lacking ancestors. (Or lets face, almost any human walking around today if suddenly all the processed food got turned off).
I didn't mean to rant. If we were looking for something to can, we'd be shopping meat sales. Fortunately, we raise our own and would only can it if refrigeration became unavailable. And we have the equipment, supplies, and experience to do that too if it was ever necessary.
Yeah. Beans are cheap. Canned are readily available. The price doesn't fluctuate much either.
Canning fish and meat would make more sense, unless OP is a vegan.
Or just buy and store them dry. Cooking beans isn't hard.
No one is storing food long term in the gunny sacks they came in. Sometimes they come in woven plastic sacks. I've stored dried beans in 3-5 gallon plastic buckets, rodents or climate have never gotten to them. After five years the beans were edible and some even sprouted in the garden when sowed.
Canning is fine, but takes huge amounts of time, water, and energy. It makes more sense to reserve canning for perishable or other products with zero shelf life.
If you ever have to move or vacate quickly, your heavy canned goods will quickly become a burden or a loss.
Maybe you think I should change my handle to 'nobody' then?
We have corn, oats, and barley in 55-gallon steel drums packed with desiccant. And a bunch of stuff in 5-gallon buckets.
I think transferring beans from the bags they come in, into buckets would be one extra step that is not needed.
As I said, I transfer corn, oats and barley from their original bags into the steel drums. But that is because those grains require a low humidity or else they will mold. We have not seen a mold issue with beans.
There is nothing wrong with cooking and canning dry beans so that they are all ready to eat and you can open a pint without having to plan a day ahead.
Me, I'm not cooking beans without making it a full batch which is several meals. I freeze cooked beans, I don't can them, but there is nothing wrong with ready to eat canned beans. Easy to pick up off the pantry shelf for a quick and easy meal.
And, incidentally, dried beans do not last forever. With age, they get stale and hard they they become impermeable so you can't cook them long enough for them to soften.
Bulk dried beans are available at the restaurant supply stores and if you are in a western state, Winco sells beans in 25 pound bags. Just about any store that sells bulk goods can special order 25 pound bags of specialty beans if they don't already sell the kind you want. Food4Less sells dry beans in bulk, if you have one of those near you.
I think transferring beans from the bags they come in, into buckets would be one extra step that is not needed.
I guess it depends on the storage location. If you have a secure, climate controlled pantry/larder that's safe from rodents then beans are probably fine in their original sacks. When I stored my bulk beans my storage was in a garage, so I kept everything in 3gal plastic buckets (5gal too heavy to lift).
I had a neighbor once who stored dry goods in galvanized metal trash cans out in the barn to protect them from mice.
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