To soak or not to soak . . . It’s a perennial question when it comes to cooking dry beans.
The instructions on the package of dry beans recommends giving them a long soak before cooking them, which requires advance planning—and may feel like a hassle.
The perceived hassle factor might be part of the reason why most people are falling short of the 1.5 cups of cooked beans a week recommended by the 2020-2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. In fact, most U.S. adults would have to eat roughly five times more cooked beans to reach that amount, according to research in the journal Frontiers in Nutrition.
It’s a mistake to let preparation concerns interfere with your consumption of beans, experts say. “We need to get more beans in our diet,” says Joan Salge Blake, a registered dietitian and nutrition professor at Boston University. “They’re a wonderful plant-forward, protein-rich food with lots of fiber and potassium—and they’re inexpensive.” Indeed, research suggests that regularly consuming beans and other legumes could reduce the risk of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and some types of cancer.
There are additional benefits to soaking beans before you cook them: It can improve their texture, make them easier to digest, and even improve their nutritional value.
The benefits of soaking your beans
Whether you want to make black beans, pinto beans, navy beans, kidney beans, great northern beans, or another type at home, one of the main reasons to soak dry beans is to reduce their cooking time significantly—often by 20 to 38 percent, research has found.
Soaking them also brings out the beans’ best texture. “Dry beans have a moisture level of 12 to 14 percent—when you soak them in water, they double in size and the higher moisture content makes them softer,” says Chelsea Didinger, a nutritionist in Fort Collins, Colorado, and founder of A Legume a Day. “The beans’ seed coat thickness influences how fast they soak up water.”
Keep in mind: If you soak your beans in hard water, which has a high mineral content, the beans may have a difficult time softening sufficiently. “Hard water contains minerals such as calcium and magnesium that can interact with the natural components in beans and result in difficulty tenderizing the beans,” says Julie Garden-Robinson, a professor and food and nutrition specialist at the North Dakota State University in Fargo. Using distilled water can alleviate this problem. The same is true of adding a little bit of salt or baking soda to the water for soaking.
Soaking dry beans also makes them easier to digest. That’s because beans contain a type of non-digestible carbohydrate called oligosaccharides, which can cause gas and bloating. “We do not have the enzymes to break down oligosaccharides,” says Garden-Robinson. When dry beans are soaked, some of the oligosaccharides are released into the water.
Similarly, soaking beans reduces their level of lectins, a type of plant-based protein, and phytates, the major form of phosphorus found in plant seeds. Lectins and phytates are sometimes called “antinutrients.” As Didinger explains, “You don’t want a lot of lectins going into your body because they can interfere with absorption of nutrients like iron and cause nausea and gastrointestinal discomfort.”
And, “if you consume a lot of them, phytates can reduce absorption of some minerals like iron and zinc,” Salge Blake says.
“The beauty of dry beans is they have a long shelf life,” says Salge Blake. Dry beans should be used within a year or two after purchase, according to the USDA’s FoodKeeper App. After that, “it’s a quality issue, not a safety concern,” Salge Blake notes.
The best methods for soaking beans
There are a few different ways to soak beans. With each one, the first step is always to rinse beans in a colander under cool running water to remove stray stones, twigs, and leaves.
With the overnight-soak method, you put water and beans in a pot, cover the beans with an extra two inches of water, and place in the refrigerator for eight to 12 hours.
With the quick-soaking method, you put the beans in a pot and cover them with water, again with an extra two inches, and bring them to a boil on the stove for three minutes; then, turn off the heat and let them soak for an hour, says Garden-Robinson.
After using any soaking method, you’ll want to discard the soaking water so you don’t reintroduce the compounds that have been removed, Salge Blake says. Then, rinse the beans under fresh water, and use fresh water to cook them.
Keep in mind: If you cook dry beans in slow cookers or crockpots, “the temperature doesn’t get hot enough to deactivate the lectins,” says Samantha Heller, a registered dietitian in New York City and Connecticut.
Don’t want to soak? Here’s what to do instead.
But if you didn’t plan ahead, don’t give up on your best-laid plans for eating beans. They’re a great source of protein, fiber, folate, potassium, and iron, as well as health-promoting antioxidants. “Beans are good for the environment, too,” Heller adds, “because they fix nitrogen in the soil.”
You can cook dry beans without soaking them first. You’ll still reap their nutritional benefits—it will just take them longer to cook.
Or, you could use canned beans, which are just as nutritious as dry beans. Canned beans are higher in sodium, though, which is why experts recommend draining and rinsing them in a colander before using them in soups, stews, salads, or other dishes. The rinsing routine will remove about 40 percent of the added sodium, Garden-Robinson says. Lower-sodium canned beans are also available.
“At the end of the day,” Didinger says, “using whichever method is going to help you eat more beans is the way to go.”