Knowledge Base > Char Nolan - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Char Nolan - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

This event was on Tuesday, October 01, 2024 at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern

Join Chef Char Nolan in her virtual office as she welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to ask anything – from cooking techniques to cou… Read More.

Recorded

Question:

Is it true that when you cook beans in water with salt, they get hardened? I guess is better to season them from the start....

— ingrid ortega

Answer:

Um, you know, I don't know because I don't use salt. When I cook beans, I will tell you what I have been doing and my beans have been coming out beautifully, especially when I'm making hummus. I, um, soak them for 18 hours. I'll soak, uh, a pound of garbanzo beans for 18 hours and nothing but water, and I might add some bay leaves so that they have a little bit of flavor to them. And then, uh, once I boil them till they're done, I, um, drain them and rinse them and put them on a cookie sheet or sheet pan I should say. And then I sprinkle about a tablespoon of baking soda all over them, and I cook them for about 10 to 15 minutes, and there's no salt anywhere in this recipe. And then what happens is that I can either use them in a salad, but if I make them into a hummus, the hummus comes out like fluffy, fluffy, fluffy, and it doesn't have that coarse or grittiness to it that hummus can sometimes have. So, um, I have not seen beans get hard without using salt. And I don't actually know the answer specifically, but I can tell you what, what, what I do in my kitchen here, huh?
Char Nolan

Char Nolan

Chef Instructor

@char_nolan