Sunday, January 17, 2010

Pinto Beans

I canned pinto beans this morning. 14 pints. That should get us through the year, I think. At least, in combination with all the other beans I've done, or plan to do. This brings the tally to 49 pints of beans canned in a 42-hour time frame. Kinda crazy... but I've been wanting to work on beans for months now... and I'm figuring out that I turn to canning, cooking, and cleaning (you should see how far our basement has come in the last two days!!) to keep my mind off things when they're crappy... and this is most definitely a very crappy time right now... Anyway, I'd like to do some cannellinis tonight, but we'll see if I make it out to the store to get more wide-mouth lids and I probably should pick up some more jars while I'm at it, too, since I'm down to only about 15 pints left and I don't want to do beans in quarts or half-pints.

Anyway, I used the crockpot to make these beans to save on the humidity in the kitchen when making them on the stovetop. I filled my 6-quart crockpot about half-way with beans last night. Then filled the other half with water - right up to the rim. Then I turned it on low and let them cook all night while we slept. I filled my 4-quart with beans, as well. I ended up with 10 pints from the 6-quart crockpot and 4 from the 4-quart pot (could have fit more in both, but that's all I had). From the crockpot, I used a slotted spoon to fill the jars with beans - make sure you tap the jars down to compact the beans. Then use a ladle to fill with the cooking liquid. Leave a 1" headspace and pressure can at 10 pounds of pressure for 75 minutes.

2 comments:

The Voogts said...

Wow, so many beans. I'm jealous :P That sounds like a super simple way to do them! I'll definitely have to try that. About how many lbs. of dried beans did you start with (of the pinto) to get that many pints?

Sara said...

Definitely the way I'll be doing the rest of my beans - I hate all the humidity that is created when I boil them on the stovetop. I probably had about 2.5 - 3 pounds of beans to start with. Not totally sure, though.