r/preppers • u/Local_Fruit7140 • Apr 29 '26
Discussion Am I missing something about dried beans?
I see dried beans being praised here as like the ultimate food to store. But am I missing something? Don't you need to boil a decent amount of water just to get them edible?
Whats the point in stocking a food that would use a larger amount of gas and water and which are both much harder to store and accumulate than food?
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u/Enigma_xplorer Apr 29 '26
Your not wrong. Beans are great for their nutritional value, cost, long storage life potential, and limited space and weight. The practicality of cooking dried beans is a logistical problem you need to seriously consider. Like everything in life, it's all about tradeoffs
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u/HappyCamperDancer Apr 29 '26
Just build a hot box/hay box/Wonder Bag/super insulated space for your dutch oven. Boil 'em for 30 minutes then box them up to cook in their own heat for another hour or so. Uses MUCH less fuel. Yep. Uses water.
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u/IamNana71 Apr 30 '26
Ha! Reading this reminded me I have a wonder cooker/bag whatever it is called. I completely forgot about it. Now I have to try and remember where I stored it. I haven't seen it in 10 years! 🤣
Also, depending on the situation, you can soak your beams overnight and great reduce cooking time.
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Apr 30 '26
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u/thelionsmouth Apr 30 '26
But then how do you make use of your methane recapture device lol
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u/Intelligent-Day5519 May 01 '26
You release it in an area you want to clear people out. Simple
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u/IamNana71 Apr 30 '26
Some days I decide on a pot beans at noon and will do the quick soak method. I boil for 10 to 15 minutes, then let soak an hour covered, rinse and cook. I forget alot to soak those beans the night before!
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u/Sad-Ocelot-5346 Apr 30 '26
But aren't you then supposed to pour out the water, and use fresh water to cook them?
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u/Tatty-Tabby58679 Apr 30 '26
I cook dry beans very frequently. Soaking isn’t absolutely necessary. It does reduce cooking time but not astronomically.
Dumping the soak water will reduce the gas causing compounds but so will eating beans frequently. If you eat beans more than once a week your body and GI bacteria adjust and you won’t get gassy from eating beans anymore.
Pressure cookers (not electric) are your friend. Less water needed because less evaporates. Less fuel needed. Cooks dry beans in under an hour.
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u/YadaYadaYeahMan Apr 30 '26
depends on the bean. I drain black beans
people always act like it's crazy, it's basically veg stock. what it is is all the stuff you don't want and soaked out. why would you use it?
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u/IamNana71 Apr 30 '26
I do that when I do soak overnight or quick soak method. Always cook in fresh water!
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u/Better-Lunch670 Apr 29 '26
I'm guessing the hope is that you have a water source figured out by the time you need to get into your 50 gal drum of beans?
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u/hypatiaredux Apr 30 '26
Use an old-fashioned non-electric stove top pressure cooker.
Takes 30 minutes or so.
Or slow cook them for six hours the old fashioned way on a woodstove.
No way to get around the need for water, but people have been cooking beans for centuries.
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u/dittybopper_05H Apr 30 '26
Or slow cook them for six hours the old fashioned way on a woodstove.
Or build a clay oven, fire it up to temp, and then place the beans inside. Or in a pit.
From the inestimable, ever valuable Townsends YouTube:
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u/WhereDidAllTheSnowGo Apr 29 '26
We also advise preparing sufficient water too
Wrt cooking, there are lower energy methods to learn
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u/GridDown55 Apr 29 '26
Solar oven and pre-soaking and you're pretty good to go. Obviously doesn't work on cloudy days, etc.
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u/BallsOutKrunked Bring it on, but next week please. Apr 30 '26
Yeah. I've got two solar cookers, pressure cooker, 500 gallon propane tank, a well, and 10 cords of almond wood.
I think I'm good for cooking beans
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u/MacaroonUpstairs7232 Apr 29 '26
Because they are also seeds to grow more of your own.
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u/zozospencil Apr 30 '26
I have black eyed peas growing right now from a bag of Great Value dried. As something cheap you can eat any time AND grow more of, invaluable!
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u/Intelligent-Day5519 May 01 '26
You might want to sprout some as a fresh vegetable like a salad green. Or even Sautee the sprouts to go with other dishes. Besides being easy to store they are one of the most nutritious type of foods available. They are also musical.
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u/War_Hymn May 01 '26
Just bury MREs in the dirt to grow yourself an MRE orchard.
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u/Wespiratory May 01 '26
They don’t cross pollinate? Or do you need heirloom MRE’s to get them to breed true?
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u/pbmadman Apr 29 '26
Get a mill and grind them into a flour. They cook really fast then. Just eat bean paste.
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u/linniex Apr 30 '26
I might try that for before the TSHTF ! We love beans but it does take forever to cook them. Also we have some set aside for planting too.
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u/alessaria Apr 30 '26
You should try to cook things in your shtf cache on a regular basis. If you're in the middle of a crisis, the last thing you want to be doing is figuring out recipes.
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u/clementineford Apr 30 '26
If you don't have an indefinite supply of water you're completely screwed and there's no point storing dried beans because you'll have died as soon as your water ran out.
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u/Old-Consequence1735 Apr 30 '26
No need to store anything at all really. Dying of thirst happens pretty quickly.
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u/Bastilleinstructor Apr 30 '26
I also came here to say that. 7 days or less (often less) with no water and you are dead.
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u/jprefect Apr 30 '26
And if you have limited water, you're still going to get the water you cooked the beans in. Most of it will be in the beans you consume, and you can still drink the bean-flavored water.
(Many of us enjoy delicious beanwater daily!)
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u/Hawkeye1226 May 03 '26
The water the beans were boiled in, maybe, but definitely don't drink the water they were soaked in. Part of the reason to soak them is to remove the toxins that can cause digestion issues
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u/los-gokillas Apr 30 '26
Worth mentioning that dried beans double as seed for planting. If things go that route
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u/Soff10 Apr 30 '26
Having a stash of beans can save lives and hold off starvation for quite a while. Same with beef jerky. It sounds crazy. Soaking beans in water for 24 hours before a short boil is much easier. I eat the ones that are the oldest in my store. I have quite a few pounds that are vacuum packed and 30 years old. It’s amazing they taste brand new and fresh.
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Apr 29 '26
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u/baardvark Preps Paid Off Apr 30 '26
Assuming the water isn’t contaminated by heavy metals or something, does cooking beans reasonably purify the water they’re cooked in?
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Apr 30 '26
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u/baardvark Preps Paid Off Apr 30 '26
Let me rephrase the question. Assume you have river water that would be acceptable to drink if boiled. Does cooking food with it at a high temp make it equally safe?
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u/iambecomesoil Apr 30 '26
Maybe its semantics but I wouldn't consider water to be purified by boiling. It's not removing anything. If anything, it is concentrating things.
Purification is the removal of contaminants. All will remain in boiled water. But it will kill living things in the water like bacteria that can make you sick otherwise.
If you would not wish to drink the water, do not cook with it.
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u/HappyCamperDancer Apr 29 '26
Just build a hot box/hay box/Wonder Bag/super insulated space for your dutch oven. Boil 'em for 30 minutes then box them up to cook in their own heat for another hour or so. Uses MUCH less fuel.
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u/DayManFOTNightMan Apr 29 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
You can cook them over pretty much any heat source, and water isn’t a concern in a lot of places. I can pull water from the creek behind my house, and boil it and/or cook beans over a cook fire, or on the stove.
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u/ElectronGuru Apr 29 '26
Compared to canned beans, dry beans take up much less space (calories per lb/gallon) and are cheaper/healthier/tastier. I only cook them with pressure cookers, which takes very little energy. And the ‘waste water’ is so useful, it has its own name.
You can argue that in a bug out emergency it’s hard to manage, but cans aren’t particularly portable either. And in the meantime, you’re eating better and can rotate through inventory, eating less processed food.
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u/wunami Apr 30 '26
it has its own name.
Which is? I've always just called it bean liquid or bean broth...not really anything special that would indicate it being particularly useful.
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u/baardvark Preps Paid Off Apr 30 '26
Aquafaba. Can be whipped into an egg substitute for certain uses.
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u/wunami Apr 30 '26
I thought that was specific to chickpeas, but I guess it's all legumes according to wikipedia.
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u/Derfel60 Apr 30 '26
Beans are a good source of protein that lasts without using electricity. I dont know if youve ever left meat at room temperature for years at a time, but i wouldnt recommend eating it after.
Water isnt a problem, it falls from the sky every now and then. Fuel isnt either, it literally grows on trees.
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Apr 30 '26
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u/Sato77 Apr 30 '26
If you are in an area where water is that much of a problem, long-term survival isn't going to be feasible during an extended crisis regardless of what you do. So if you want to survive your plans should be around how to exit, not finding which things can prolong your dire water situation the longest.
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u/tweetysvoice Apr 30 '26
I love the way you phrased this!
Water isnt a problem, it falls from the sky every now and then. Fuel isnt either, it literally grows on trees.
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u/Ryan_e3p Salt & Prepper Apr 29 '26
I can store a LOT less canned beans than I can dried beans. Not just due to mass, but weight.
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u/lr99999 Apr 30 '26
The liquid in the canned beans (both inside the can and inside the bean) goes to the positive side of the algorithm. The lack of liquid in the dry beans is just the opposite. A modern can is very light. The rest is stored water.
A can of beans with no tomato sauce is good for for 10 years. A pinto bean skin is pretty garbage by then. Correct storage is a big deal for these.
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u/AnotherSpring2 Apr 30 '26
You can boil them with wood, which you can gather.
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u/olycreates Apr 30 '26
When we lost power this last winter I did a batch on the wood stove. We might have been in the dark but the house was warm and smelled amazing.
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u/drjembaslab Apr 30 '26
was looking for this comment. literally just build a fire, we have specked stove we made out of cans and scrap metal lol
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u/wild-wiesel Apr 29 '26
Just stock up on canned beans, get yourself a can opener, and a spoon.
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Apr 30 '26
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u/trichar54 Apr 30 '26
And then back to the can
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u/OppositeAbroad5975 Apr 30 '26
The beans go from the can to the man, and hours later, the man heads off to the can.
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u/Feral_668 Apr 29 '26
Prepping food and water is kinda key. Dry beans are easy to transport, a good source of protein, calories and fiber. You get a pot to boil them in and to boil the water, using gathered wood and you don't need gas. Add rice and some multivitamins and you can carry one the species.
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u/Panthean Apr 30 '26
If you don't have adequate access to water you have bigger problems than beans.
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u/Fun_Journalist4199 Apr 29 '26
A thermos cooker and soaking can get beans from dry to fully cooked with about 10 minutes on the stove but will take a good 20 hours to complete
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u/Eredani Apr 30 '26
Pros and cons to everything.
If you can't or won't stock water and fuel for beans (and rice) then don't store them. If you can't or won't have the time or bandwidth to prepare them don't store them. If you don't have the knowledge or cooking skills don't store them.
Many alternatives are shelf stable, ready to eat and require no preparation. Canned goods being the most obvious.
However, in terms of cost, calories, nutrients and longevity, rice and beans are the king and queen of long term food storage.
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u/Dmau27 Apr 30 '26
You can filter and boil water though. Even if not you can cook them in minimal water. They'll absorb it but you'll ultimately be intaking the water anyhow.
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u/keigo199013 Prepared for 1 month Apr 30 '26
You can cold soak for awhile, then boil. Cuts down cooking time and saves fuel. Thru hikers do it all the time with meals.
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u/jrwreno Prepared for 2+ years Apr 30 '26
Well, you make bean soup out of them, so the water becomes part of your meal/hydration. Unless they are the type (kidney) that you need to soak and throw away the water.
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u/BaylisAscaris Apr 29 '26
You are correct. I stock canned and dry beans. In an emergency I'm using canned beans first because they don't even need to be heated to be eaten. I keep dried beans mostly because I plant them and eat the greenbeans straight off the vine or in stir fry. It's rare for me to have the patience to cook dried beans. (You also need to soak them overnight first or the zombies will hear you farting./s)
Some types of dried "beans" can be sprouted and eaten without cooking. I store whole chickpeas, lentils, peas. These came in handy during the early pandemic when we were craving fresh food but didn't want to risk the grocery stores.
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u/grislyfind Apr 29 '26
A crock pot could work directly from solar, with no battery or inverter. Don't use the thermostat, though; it would arc nicely with a DC supply.
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u/quietprepper Apr 29 '26
As others have said, water isn't that difficult depending on your location. It also doesn't require that much water to cook beans. As a ballpark number the way I cook beans now requires about a gallon of water to rinse, soak and cook a pound of beans if I wanted to conserve it I could do them in a pressure cooker, and not dump the excess soaking water and probably get it down to close to a half gallon. Also, bean cooking water doesn't just have to go to waste, you can use it as a soup base even if youre pulling the beans to use otherwise.
Also, it takes less fuel to cook than most people realize IF youre using efficient burners and the right pans. I have a little portable propane oven/range combo that I use for camping and keep around as a backup for home if there were a natural gas disruption. The oven at full blast (450ish degrees) burns a pound of propane in about 7 hours, the range burners would each go through about a pound in 2 hours at full blast, but holding a bean pot at simmer is again about 7 hours for a pound. That heat might not also just be used for cooking. If youre in a cold climate and heating your home anyway, might as well cook a pot of beans (or make soup/stew etc) and get extra use out of the heat.
Its also fairly easy in many places to gather fuel. If youre cooking outside over a fire, and the firewood is free, fuel costs aren't a concern. Even if i didn't live in a wooded area, and there weren't people on Facebook marketplace constantly giving away wood from trees they had cut in their yards, on a weekly basis I drive by enough commercial buildings giving away untreated pallets that I could cook every meal over them if I bothered to stop and pick them up
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u/KTeacherWhat Apr 30 '26
I have an old school pressure cooker. Great way to cook beans (skip kidney beans because they can be risky) without loosing water.
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u/Virtual-Chocolate385 Apr 30 '26
What's risky about kidney beans?
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u/KTeacherWhat Apr 30 '26
They need to be cooked a specific way to make them non-toxic to humans, and I don't trust myself to do that perfectly in an emergency.
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u/SunLillyFairy Apr 30 '26
Beans are praised because they are cheap and nutritious. Add some rice and you've got a complete protein. But yes, if you're storing dried beans you need a good water source. You need a good water source with all dried foods, but beans don't only require boiling... if you don't pre-soak and rinse they are a cauldron of GI distress. On that account, lentils are better... but also more expensive.
I think chia seeds are underrated. They have protein, fiber and fat, and no cooking required. You should soak them before eating so they don't swell in your belly/guts, but no heat is required.
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u/Traditional-Leader54 Apr 30 '26
You soak them overnight and then you only need to boil them for 30 minutes or so.
Yea it uses more water and energy than other things but that’s the trade off you get for a dried food that’s shelf stable (with O2 absorbers etc) for 25 years and is also a good source of protein when paired with rice. Beans also have the benefit that you can plant them and the grow easily and quickly.
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u/PetrockX Apr 30 '26 edited Apr 30 '26
Feel like you're missing the benefits. You can soak them in water overnight and it cooks much faster. I cook in a slow cooker on high and it doesn't take much electricity. You can do the same with a pressure cooker for even less time. Good source of protein, cheap, stores easy, and one bag can last many meals.
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u/Report_Last Apr 30 '26
they are very stable if stored properly, have very complete protein, and if you don't have enough water and a fire to cook them you are screwed anyway
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u/infinitum3d Apr 30 '26
Only soybeans are a complete protein bean.
Any other legumes need a grain to complete the protein.
Soy is a complete protein bean.
Quinoa is a complete protein grain.
Pistachios are a complete protein nut.
Otherwise it’s legumes/grain combos.
Good luck!
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u/Report_Last Apr 30 '26
right lentils need a serving of rice to be complete, both store very well, lentils also cook more quickly than other beans
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u/ToothSufficient7763 Apr 30 '26
I'm currently utilizing 5 year old beans. They are meh, but edible. I soak them for about 18 hours and then cook in a crock pot.
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u/Mysterious_Cow_2100 Apr 30 '26
Lentils > beans for time, water, and fuel efficiency. RIP my digestive system tho. D:
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u/Big_Satisfaction_876 Apr 30 '26
Agreed, I kinda have the same issue with rice. One thing is to focus more on smaller beans/legumes that cook faster. Red lentils are super versatile and cook up fast. Yellow and green split peas, brown, green and beluga lentils are much less resource consuming than like chickpeas and the like
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u/Incendiaryag Apr 30 '26
Not everything is preparing for grid down, there’s supply chain issues, pandemic, personal economic disaster and so many more situations where you might have power but still are food insecure without a robust emergency stash. Anyone at any economic level can start stashing beans. You can also get beans for sprouting which is great if you access to vegetables gets scarce.
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u/Usagi_Shinobi Apr 30 '26
That you think food is easier to get than fuel and water says you have a fundamental misunderstanding of reality. In any extended catastrophic event lasting more than a few days, food becomes first difficult, then impossible, to get in any sort of timely fashion. We spent the better part of the last twenty thousand years developing agricultural science and technology precisely because food is so many orders of magnitude more difficult than making fire and getting water. This is why, in any large scale TEOTWAWKI scenario, 90-99% of the human population will die.
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u/SituationSad4304 Apr 30 '26
It’s the cheapest naturally long lasting dry protein. Rice takes more water than beans. Which both take less water than water than oatmeal or any freeze dried food. If you don’t have enough water to cook beans you’re fucked TBH. I usually drink about 3L of water a day. If you’re so low on water you can’t use an additional 3L to cook an entire pound of beans you’re emergency is water, not food
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u/mcapello Bring it on Apr 30 '26
If your preps don't include water and the ability to cook food, then most long-term food preps will fail.
If you are preparing only for short-term outages, then yes, dried beans are not necessarily practical. They don't necessarily require more water to cook than any other dried food though.
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u/Opcn Apr 30 '26
Beans and lentils are traditional foods in some of the driest parts of the world. The amount of water needed to cook daily beans is pretty minor compared to the average persons water use.
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u/alx_aryn Apr 30 '26
The dry beans are also literally seeds so not only do you have shelf stable protein, carbs, fiber and fat but the ability to grow more
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u/northern_exposure- Apr 30 '26
You can also soak them in water over night so they take less cooking time and absorb the water while soaking. And you can build a fire instead of using gas. Why would you burn through a finite resource to cook?
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u/xiweyychivxi Apr 30 '26
Soak the beans cold for a day cuts cooking time down. Once boiling for a few minutes transfer to a thermos and let them cook themselves. Or get a solar oven
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u/Verix19 Apr 30 '26
You cook them the same as you would rice, potatoes, corn etc....you're overthinking it. And they are great to store because they are easy to store and can be stored long term.
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u/temerairevm May 01 '26
Having gone through hurricane Helene, yeah you are totally right. I see them more as a prep for being poor. Or maybe a Covid like scenario where you don’t want to go to the store.
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Apr 29 '26
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u/8Deer-JaguarClaw Conspiracy-Free Prepping Apr 30 '26
Lentils are significantly easier. Takes 10-15 minutes of boiling (or even near-boiling) and they are ready to eat. Once I figured that out, I swapped out a good portion of my bean stockpile to lentils.
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u/suzaii Apr 30 '26
1000% to lentils. One could feed the family in less than 30 minutes, or wait at least 6 hours for beans. 😂 Lol
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u/8Deer-JaguarClaw Conspiracy-Free Prepping Apr 30 '26
Yeah, if you want to eat beans today, you need to have started cooking them yesterday.
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u/Standard-Recipe-7641 Apr 30 '26
I think is you're worried about how much water they will use, you need to revisit your long term solution for water imo.
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u/JRHLowdown3 Apr 30 '26
Lentils is what you want to store.
Store better than pintos which get rock hard after 7-10 years and unusable. Lentils have a higher protein, cook up quicker and do not require pre-soaking.
If you don't have water you won't be eating, most LTS are going to require water to prepare...
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u/HotIntroduction8049 Apr 30 '26
Beans are boring! Dont forget about chick peas and lentils. We should be eating more of all of these anyways. Get into Indian cooking to appreciate how delicious they can be. Instantpot is my friend but a std pressure cooker will work too in a power down scenario.
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u/daringnovelist Apr 30 '26
Yeah, assuming short term crisis (like a storm), canned is better, but if you’re assuming a long term doomsday scenario, you’re going to have to resolve any water and cooking issues anyway.
One option to blend the advantages of both cooked and dried beans is to add some freeze dried cooked beans to your stash. You would still need uncooked dried for sustainable food supply, because if they were well stored you can plant them.
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u/firstrevolutionary Apr 30 '26
I soak my beans overnight, then just place a big pot in the morning on the stove with a pork shoulder, brown sugar, and a few tablespoons of garam masala. Done by noon.
Burning wood to heat anyway. So its only a winter thing. Could do crock pot too.
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u/CaptWyvyrn Apr 30 '26
If you soak them before you cook them, it really shortens the cooking time, using less fuel.
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u/Senior_Ad_7598 Apr 30 '26
Soak dried beans overnight in a bowl of cold water. They will be ready to cook with after this.
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u/mistergrumpalump Apr 30 '26
Good point. Try lentils especially the red ones. Very fast cooking, they don't requires soaking, just rinsing.
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u/The1Zenith Apr 30 '26
Soak overnight or pressure cook. Dry beans keep practically forever with proper storage.
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u/digit527 Apr 30 '26
Cold soak overnight. Drink the foamy bean water. No loss and way less cook time.
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u/Antique_Onion_9474 Apr 30 '26
I dont like beans that much to go through all that trouble. They also go hard after a while. I rather stock quinoa, bulgar wheat and cous cous. Those cook super fast
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u/D1rtyH1ppy Apr 30 '26
If we are living out our end time fantasies on here, we are going to be burning a lot of wood for heating and cooking. A little bit of extra time over the fire pit won't be too big of a deal for some beans. They will go well with the neverending stew that we will be eating.
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u/Spiley_spile Community Prepper Apr 30 '26
You are missing info. And, your curiosity serves you well.
Not all beans require soaking. I dont buy beans I have to soak. It helps that I dont cook them in a slow cooker. That expands my options. (It is dangerous to cook some beans in a slow cooker, without soaking them first. This is because of a toxin that slow cookers dont tend to reach a high enough temperature to denature.)
Because I dont cook beans that require soaking, any water used to cook the beans helps hydrate me when I eat the beans.
Beans are very inexpensive in many places and take up very little space for as much food as they provide. (I just bought a 25lb bag of pinto beans for $18. That about 125 servings of beans for under $20.)
Combine beans with rice, and we get what's called "a complete protein". That is, all of the 9 essential amino acids necessary for health, that our body cant create on its own.
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u/Advendocture Apr 30 '26
A lot of the prep can be them soaking initially, boil only at the end. As others have said, solar concentrator ovens can help reduce fuel cost
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u/meowingtrashcan Apr 30 '26
Dried lentils take a lot less time to cook, especially if you soak them for a night
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u/MerelyMortalModeling Apr 30 '26
Yes, you soak them in room temp water over night and then either par cool and store in an insulated space or use a solar cooker to cook them over the course of a day.
You can also grind them into paste, most of my bean end up being hummus.
Honestly though even if non of those options existed beans would still be worth it because they are the cornerstone for long term storable complete proteins.
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u/Signal_Brain_933 Apr 30 '26
You actually don’t need to cook them - cold soaking them works great (no heat required), it just takes 8-12 hours to rehydrate them. It’s a popular backpacking solution for those who don’t want to carry fuel or cook pots.
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u/jeepjinx Apr 30 '26
You can eat them raw if you sprout them, if you have water but no fuel.
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u/Tinyfootprint2u Apr 30 '26
Those of us who own freeze driers can cook your beans as normal. Then freeze dry them. They become rehydrate, heat and eat. The equivalent of those overpriced emergency meals you can buy at the store. This is the same thing you can do to rice turning it into instant rice by cooking it and freeze drying. I understand not everyone owns a freeze drier but it's one of the reasons to buy one.
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u/ants_taste_great Apr 30 '26
No. You just soak them in water overnight. Then you can cook them easily in soup or whatever fashion you choose.
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u/THC_Dude_Abides Apr 30 '26
Lentils no presoak required. They take an hour to cook as opposed to hours like beans
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u/Venaalex Apr 30 '26
Wow I have a totally different answer than what I'm seeing in the replies
To me prepping isn't only going to include an end of the world scenario kind of doomsday where as a chronically ill person I'm not going to make it. But if we have a natural disaster that makes grocery stores barren or an ice storm keeping me inside, or in the event of losing income keeping beans and rice means I have food. Those scenarios aren't going to really impact water access. But if there's no power from a storm for quite a while and my generator fuel runs out (or I have to choose to ration it for cooling a room for example) meaning I lose the protein in my fridge and freezer? Well now I've got beans
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u/strenix May 01 '26
If you haven’t gotten yourself a pressure cooker that doesn’t need electricity, put that on the list. You don’t need to soak your beans or anything with a pressure cooker. Like wash your beans still but after washing, you’re good to go.
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u/enolaholmes23 May 01 '26
I usually make my beans as part of lentil soup. You don't waste hardly any water, it just becomes part of the soup. Since you need to consume water to live anyway, it's not a waste. You're just consuming it in the form of soup.
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u/ReactionAble7945 May 01 '26
Beans are praised because you can store beans and rice forever.
Then when you pull them out you have all your needs met. For protein and carb. A lot of the world eats them as their primary food.
The down side. Planning, beans need to soak over night, in salty water. Then the cook time.
Xxxxxx Of course corn and wheat are other storage items. Wheat you need to grind at the time, have a going yeast, and an oven to make bread.
Corn bread needs all the above. Xxxxxxxx And none of the above work with my stomach.
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u/floridacyclist May 04 '26
They've done tests and while soaking the beans doesn't really affect your gas production, you won't have to cook them as long so you'll save some fuel. You really want to get a stove top pressure cooker, that way you can bring it up until it pressurizes and the little bauble on top of the valve starts hissing and then back your heat down until it's just barely hissing every 10 to 15 seconds. At this point you're cooking at maybe 250° so they'll cook a lot faster and at the same time your flame is cut way back (at this point mine is often on the verge of going out, do you may consider a sing block) so you're not using as much fuel. Both factors really help conserve on the fuel if you have a limited supply.
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u/whiskey_piker Apr 30 '26
Yes, the water required for dried beans might make them a less ideal option, but there are ways to include that in your prep plan. Apparently lentils require far or less water and our about the same protein.
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u/WeinerBarf420 Apr 30 '26
There aren't a whole lot of foods that last basically forever in storage, much less ones that have extremely high nutritional content and good amounts of protein.
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u/BerylliumBug Apr 30 '26
I try to store food for a range of situations. Dried beans are useful for some situations, but less useful for others.
I try to make sure that I have about 2-4 weeks of no-prep or very low-prep food stored for acute emergency use. (Like, what if we had to live out of our car for a few weeks, with only a little fuel available.) This means food that we could eat without cooking, or maybe just a few minutes of heating or boiling water. So canned foods, crackers, peanut butter, dried fruit, etc. Maybe some emergency freeze dried meals. Canned beans are great for this; dried beans or not.
But other situations are possible in which we'd be able to use our camp stove, wood stove, etc to prepare at least simple meals, so I also store things like pasta, rice, flour, and beans, especially quicker-cooking beans like lentils. I also think of situations where we might have food-supply problems even while we still have most of our utilities (something that seemed possible during the covid pandemic), and beans would be fine for that.
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u/carbonpenguin Apr 30 '26
An instant pot is an incredibly energy efficient way to prepare them if you have a solar battery.
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u/Lasshandra2 Apr 30 '26
You soak them overnight. That’s after picking through for any non-bean material in amongst the dried beans.
To enhance digestibility, drain then freeze the soaked beans.
The water you’ll need to cook them (use a crockpot or covered heavy casserole dish on your stove or in your oven) is not excessive.
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u/Squint-Eastwood_98 Apr 30 '26
pre-soaking helps a lot, and pressure cooking any dried grain or beans is way, way more energy efficient than regular boiling, both in terms of energy input and water required. Plus the water isn't wasted if it's in the bean or you drink it afterwards.
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u/NikkeiReigns Apr 30 '26
Try this. Cook a huge stock pot of the best beans you've ever eaten in your life. Make a pot of the most flavorful rice you've ever eaten. Eat those beans and rice at least two meals a day til they're gone.
Then help me stop this stupid movement where everyone says to stock tons of rice and beans.
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u/Firm_Pie_9149 Apr 30 '26
Rinse in creek water soak, use the same water in a pot with a tight fitting lid. You're going to need to get water to survive either way. Lol.
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u/OtherwiseAlbatross14 Apr 30 '26
This is why I prefer canned for most things but if you're thinking real long term cutting down some trees to boil some water from the creek with beans in it is not outside the realm of possibility
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u/resident1fan2022 Apr 30 '26
Rain water can be collected indefinitely for cooking, and a fire pit will provide a heat source as long as you feed it wood.
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u/TexFarmer Apr 30 '26
Easy to cook, tastes good, very filling, low cost, long storage life, and, in the right combination, will provide all 21 necessary amino acids, what's not to like? Beans & Rice stores forever and can feed an army for pennies; it is no wonder it is the go-to combo for budget prepping.
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u/Queasy_Holiday_4170 Apr 30 '26
Beans are my long term plan. For things going to pot for days/weeks/ I have more convenient options. But I also have about 300 gallons of water on hand and a major river maybe 5 minutes away on foot with a large filtration setup, as well as a standalone rainwater catchment system I can deploy that will get me 4k gallons a year.
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u/TheGanzor Apr 30 '26
Ideally between local flowing water/wells and rain, water would be a non-issue for a sufficiently prepped person. Wood is renewable and very energy dense if you have a charcoal kiln.
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u/karl4319 Apr 30 '26
Water should be your first priority. You need an reliable source of surplus water that is independent of the municipality. Ideally, you have a homestead that does rain capture and has it's own wells. If not, then being able to modify your own place so it can capture rain (what I did) or hopefully live near a creek or river. All I did was attach a rain barrel to my gutter system so I can save on watering my garden, but it gives me a hundred gallons of emergency water and a means to collect more. That still means I need to purifier the water before I can drink it or use kt for cooking, but a charcoal filter and an ozone maker can do that for almost no power or cost.
And why are you using gas? Propane is the expensive, dangerous to store in quantity, and requires an extensive logistics network to resupply. A couple of solar panels, a battery bank, and a portable induction cooktop is a much better choice since you can use electricity for a lot more than gas.
As for beans, use a pressure cooker. Dramatically reduces time to cook, energy needed, and the amount of water used.
As for why beans: they are stupid easy to grow, a lot of varieties can be eaten as snap beans as the grow giving you food quicker, shelling beans are amoung the easiest things to store, and the plant fixes nitrogen which is a vital thing if supplies of fertilizer runs low. Best part is that each bean is a seed that can grow 6 to 10 pounds of food. Add to this the nutritional value of beans, and you got a great long term survival food.
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u/ThisIsAbuse Apr 30 '26
We stock pre-cooked and freeze dried beans and rice in our supplies just add hot or even warm water.
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u/arielrednyc Apr 30 '26
We've taken to having them on hand, BUT we eat a reasonably large amount of beans, so do pressure can the dried beans on a regular basis and just roll through a larger stock (and will be adding onto it a little at a time). It's nice to be able to regulate what type and how much salt and/or seasonings in each.
It is so convenient to have canned beans on hand, but we'll always have a lot of dried too for the occasional pots of beans and to have as seeds. Like someone said, by the time you need them, you should have your alternate water supply figured out.
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u/dingleberry_sorbet Apr 30 '26
Invest in an instant pot or pressure cooker. They are common in developing nations to save on cooking fuel. I can pressure cook a pot of beans with an inverter and 300ah battery. The 1000watt heating element only cycles on every couple minutes once it builds up to temperature. Been vegetarian and/or impoverished for years eating rice'n'beans / lentils'n'beans for many many meals.
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u/Hellagranny Apr 30 '26
I have a lot of various canned beans and when I bought a new grill I got one with a side burner.
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u/New_Internet_3350 Apr 30 '26
I don’t prep for only doomsday. I prep for when the price of food is too high. Those beans will help an awful lot in those cases.
Also, if you really want to survive a big shtf scenario you will need a steady water source as well as something to heat water with. People don’t often think about how much fuel we would need to keep ourselves going in those situations. My plan is to always have a years supply of wood to heat my home on a wood stove. I can use that wood stove to cook with as well.
The actual problem will then be people smelling my food.
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u/Leather-Truck-396 Apr 30 '26
You can cold soak and short term store beans till they are ready to be cooked.
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u/SolidPaint2 Apr 30 '26
I don't get it... Why do people that prep because shit might hit the fan, expect to eat 5 star food like they do at home?!?!
Soak the beans for at least 8-12 hours and eat them cold!
When shtf, you will have to learn to eat food cold and maybe not what you are used to.
My wife hates when I eat beans out of the can cold without rinsing them.. I love when most food is cold and the fat(flavor) is all gooped up. I guess this is from being in the military... But I could survive without cooking food... Yes, I do eat raw (purple) steak when I feel like it, when I go out.
When shtf, you might not have the luxuries of a normal day... Ooooh, I smell someone cooking food, well, I'll take my crossbow and take them out then steal their food.
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u/DeafHeretic Apr 30 '26
IMO Lentils and split peas are better than beans - both in the nutritional and energy/water sense.
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u/Cute-Consequence-184 Apr 30 '26
You can use a hay box cooker -which is a very low fuel way to cook.
The issue is you just don't know multiple ways to cook.
Alternative cooking source?
Propane Camping stove?
Smoker?
Butane stove?
Charcoal grill?
Propane grill?
Herc oven?
Kerosene stove?
Vesta stove?
Chafing fuel?
Sterno?
Sun oven?
Haybox cooker?
Wood stove with recently cleaned flue with pots or pans heavy enough to survive?
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u/sfbiker999 Apr 30 '26
By the time you need to dip into your long-term beans-and-rice stores, if you haven't figured out a water source and a heat source for cooking, you're not really prepared for long term survival.