Some Legumes Recipes!

Well, since I am sort of behind in updating this (things have been busy the past few weeks! A lot of tests and adventures on the weekends.) I am going to put several recipes up on here!

Today in lab we focused on "legumes", which technically is any sort of pod with edible seeds (peanuts and snap peas/beans are in the legume category), but of course we typically think of the beans such as black beans, or pinto.

If you want to learn more about how to cook dried legumes and save money, here is a link to a "lesson" in that. http://rouxbe.com/cooking-school/lessons/256-how-to-cook-dried-legumes
Rouxbe has SOOOOO many easy and very useful lessons on cooking many things, so if you want to learn how to cook other things it is an excellent site. They have a great lesson on selecting types of meats and what certain ones go best with as well. We use it a lot in my culinary arts class!

Anyway, there were a few great recipes for an ways to use legumes/beans. They are an excellent and cheap source of protein, as well as providing many other vitamins and minerals we usually don't get enough of like zinc and magnesium. (And don't be scared off by some of the uses, these were all really great recipes in my opinion!) I think I'll post each one in a separate post so it will be easier though :-)

Oh, I forgot to add a note that we also learned that the more you eat beans and legumes, the less gasiness they cause. The reason they cause gas are because of sugars they contain that are indigestible to humans, but once your body gets used to you eating them, they affect you less! Cool huh. Also a way to reduce gasiness when preparing them from a dried state, is to soak them overnight, or longer (properly, see that video for more info if you need it) and get rid of the water you soak them in as it contains a lot of those indigestible sugars.

Another little tip for you is that I also did the same thing with beans as I did with rice. Make the huge batch of them from the dried state (so cheap), allow them to cool and place them in freezer bags labeling it with the date of when I made them. Measuring out 2 C per bag would probably be helpful but it's not neccessary. With beans, you want to undercook them slightly if you're planning on freezing them so if you want to use some right then and freeze some later, just take out the amount you want to freeze and cool those down. They keep well up to 6 months in the freezer. And about 5 days in the fridge.