#VeganRamadan: This Lebanese YouTuber has a hack for cooking dried beans in minutes

#VeganRamadan: This Lebanese YouTuber has a hack for cooking dried beans in minutes
Soaking pulses overnight can be tedious, but here's how to cook them in less than ten minutes with a pressure cooker.
3 min read
15 May, 2019
Dried pulses save a lot of money, and now time [Getty]

Living on a plant based mainly wholefood diet, I live on beans. Because I like to cook impulsively and I do so making sure I use ingredients I already have so nothing goes to waste, I don't really plan my meals per se. I also loathe the thought of soaking dried beans and pulses in advance for six hours.

Because of this, I used to find myself just buying tinned beans – problem being is if I wasn't meal prepping, I would have only used half of the tin and sometimes bearing the guilt of forgetting and wasting food. That was until my mum came home with dried fava beans that she found on sale and was determined to cook them without soaking (patience really does run in my family, doesn't it?).

I laughed at the idea, but she took to Sheikh Google, determined that if she types a question in Arabic, the answer will come. Turns out, she was actually right and found a way to cook dried beans and pulses in around five minutes using the help of a YouTube tutorial.

Joumana Planet is a famous Lebanese YouTuber with over 240,000 subscribers. Her channel has Levantine Arab recipes, but she's mostly famous for her quirky household hacks.

Unfortunately, her channel doesn't have English subtitles, but this one is too useful not to translate for you all. Even if you can't understand Arabic, I still recommend you watch the video after reading the instructions in English for a visual tutorial.

 

Ingredients:

Desired amount of dried beans

2 heaped teaspoons of sugar

1 heaped teaspoon of baking powder

1 litre of water (approx. – make sure the beans are fully covered with water)

Instructions:

1. Pour the water inside a pressure cooker and simmer until it starts to boil. Take it off the heat.

2. Add the sugar and the baking powder and mix slightly for a second or two

3. Quickly add the beans and turn on the stove on medium heat

4. Just before the water starts to boil again, add the pressure cooker lid and leave for five minutes

5. After five minutes, take off the lid and check if it's done – if it needs more, leave it on for an extra minute or two but do not exceed a total of ten minutes cooking time. If they're just about done and you know they'll cook further if you will add to a recipe, then feel free to leave them.

6. Drain if there's any leftover water, rinse and you're done!

Ever since finding out about this, my vegan cooking game changed dramatically. It's given me the freedom to cook on demand and has really helped save money with being able to buy and rely on dried pulses in bulk.

Check out our #VeganRamadan series here.