Absolutely salt your bean cooking water for the best results.

I have been on a Mexican cooking kick recently so I’ll explain how to make really good black beans.

You can cook beans on a stove, in the microwave, in a pressure cooker, or most beans in a slow cooker with the caveat that a few varieties of dried beans absolutely need to be boiled for a minimum of 10 minutes to denature the toxins. But that aside, it’s basically all the same.

One of the benefits of microwave cooking is that it will require significantly less energy than most other methods and it’s exceedingly unlikely to burn on the bottom.

Now for Mexican black beans that go well in salads, burritos and tacos, or with a side of rice:

Get your black beans and water together, as per usual. I eyeball it but there’s plenty of info about measurements out there.

Salt your water.

Add a couple of onions or just one if you don’t like them that much. You can grate them or just slice them in half and remove the halves when the cooking is done, although that’s a bit wasteful but to each their own.

Add garlic. A couple of smashed cloves or minced or garlic powder/granules. Doesn’t really matter.

Add in a big heap of ground cumin, a bay leaf or two if you have them on hand, a reasonable amount of oregano (South American oregano is better but use what you’ve got), a reasonable amount of paprika (smoked is good but either is fine), and chipotle in adobo (chopped/minced/blended) to taste (or cayenne pepper if you don’t have chipotle in adobo on hand.)

After the water has simmered for about 10 minutes, give it a taste - it should be very flavourful, almost like a soup. If it tastes bland, your beans will be bland. Adjust the flavours as you see fit.

Simmer the beans for at least one hour but two is better. Add extra water if it starts getting dry at any point.

To finish the beans, remove the bay leaves and onion halves if you didn’t dice or grate it. Add extra salt if needed and a decent amount of fat or oil. Use what you’ve got on hand but if you’re cooking for omnivores then lard is the best. A vegan alternative to lard is deodorised coconut oil (NOT extra virgin coconut oil - it should have no distinction coconut-y smell or flavour.) If you’re using the beans as a filling then you can cook the liquid down towards the end of the cooking process and then mash some of them, say about 1/8 to 1/4 of them, and stir this well so it combines with the liquid to make a sort of refried bean thing to hold the whole beans together. Add liquid smoke if you feel like it. If you are using the beans in a salad or similar application, you’ll want to strain the beans before using and you won’t want to mash any.

To elevate this dish, here are some optional extras:

• Throw in some tomatoes at any stage in the cooking process. Tinned, fresh, paste, whatever.

• Add lime juice

• Start your dish by blooming your spices in oil first (yes, this can be done in the microwave) then move on to adding water and beans etc.

• Add a tiny pinch of baking soda if you prefer softer beans

• Add coriander/cilantro stems (and roots) to the liquid while cooking, removing at the end, if you like the flavour

• Get at least a few poblano chiles or green capsicum/bell peppers. The more the merrier. Cook over an open flame (barbeque, gas burner etc.) or under very hot grill until the skin has completely blackened. Put into a covered bowl to steam while it cools. Either brush the blackened skin off under water or leave on then finely chop the flesh as you please, adding this to the beans at any stage (although the earlier the better but it’s flexible - most of the time I’ll start this process once the beans are already simmering.)

I do dried but that’s because I eat a lot of beans. Canned is honestly fine if you don’t eat a ton of them on a small scale purchase the savings are negligible and the extra labour is extensive.

Never heard of anyone cooking beans in the microwave, doesn’t sound great to me. Honestly the concept was distressing enough for me to double check that this wasn’t c/badposting.

For two large (596 mL) tins of your choice, fry up one large or two small onions, maybe 5-6 cloves of garlic crushed, a bay leaf, some peppers if you want some spice. If you have celery you can add a few stalks chopped finely. Fry until the onion begins to brown. You can add some other vegetable too at this stage, maybe some chopped kale or cabbage if you want. Even potatoes honestly. Certain vegetables will really take over the dish though, so I’d avoid broccoli, mushrooms, zucchini, etc. I add ginger sometimes at this step, sounds like you like ginger you should add it here, I just find its hard to control the flavour so I haven’t added it lately.

Add two tomatoes, chopped. Let it fry for a while.

Then drain and rinse your tinned beans, and add them.

Spice with salt and whatever spices you like. For straight beans I do white pepper, garlic powder, turmeric. Maybe a bit of cumin but just a small amount.

Some general tricks:

Beans can take a lot of oil. If you’re vegan fat intake isn’t really a problem for you so just go ham. Sometimes beans taste like they need salt but they actually need oil.

If you have red wine open and about, splash some of that in at the tomatoes step. If you don’t (this sounds crazy) but add some leftover coffee from the morning - it’s good and balances the flavours.

Adding some molasses to balance flavours is a good option, just be careful not to add too much.

FYI if you have access to a pressure cooker or instant pot, you can skip the soak on dried beans. Obviously it’s still going to take a lot longer than a microwave and you have to account for the moisture they will absorb but it makes it much less of a pain in the ass. Typically takes 60-90 minutes to get them tender.

I didn’t think it was possible but this whole thread is making me hungry for beans. Trust me, this is very unusual. Now i have to comment so i remember to try these recipes!

You need a little acid in there! Lime juice, hot sauce, and apple cider vinegar are my favorite ways about it.

Normally, I cook em from dry in my instant pot since energy is free in my apartment so its ~8x cheaper than canned and I can make them less salty than canned beans. I usually make chili, refritos, and baked beans this way. Cooking from dry used to take me 2-4 hours with presoaking, but now it takes me about an hour from the time the beanlust comes on me.

i am a student of internet shaquille, i eat microwave-crisped fried chickpeas with various fixins like all the time

It sort of depends on what I’m doing with the beans. If I’m just tossing some beans into a tofu scramble or fajitas or some other dish where the beans aren’t the main star and are just there for a bit of extra nutrition, then I’ll just drain and rinse a can of pintos or black beans or whatever and just toss 'em in and cook long enough so they’re hot. Easy.

But, if I’m doing a bowl of beans type situation, or a stew base, then I’ll cook dry beans from scratch so I can get that tasty, tasty bean broth. And the way I do it is as follows:

1. Rinse and soak the beans, ideally overnight, but really it’s kind of whatever, the less you soak the more you have to cook, is all.

2. (Optional) Cook an onion, some garlic, maybe a bell pepper or a couple of carrots or a couple of sticks of celery, or any other veggies you want to use for background flavor until they’re soft. Don’t use any salt for this step, but feel free to toss in pepper, any herbs you like, maybe some chili powder or cumin. I usually put a decent amount of oil here too, which both keeps the veggies from sticking and makes the final product tastier. You can use as much or as little oil as you like.

3. Drain the beans out of their soaking liquid and toss in the pot. Add water until you have about 2 inches of water above the beans. Bring to a roiling boil and let it boil for about 10 minutes. (Most beans don’t actually need this boiling step, but some varieties will give you some pretty unpleasant stomach pain if you don’t boil them, so just do it with all of them to be safe.) No salt yet, add it at the end after the beans are soft. They’ll turn out better, I promise.

4. Turn the heat down to a very low simmer, add any other spices, herbs, and what have you, BUT, still no salt and also nothing acidic yet either, no citrus or vinegar. I like cumin, (mexican) oregano, a bay leaf, some chili powder, and pepper, usually, but whatever you want to add is great.

5. Check on them every half hour or so until they’re basically done. This will usually take hours and depends heavily on how fresh your beans are. You may also have to add some more water if your beans are thirsty. Try to add hot water rather than cold so you don’t slow down the cooking process any slower than it already is. Once they’re soft enough for your liking, THEN you can add salt and acid. If you add those things before the beans are soft, they don’t soften as much as they should. As far as quantity of salt, the answer is: more than you think. The way I judge it is I taste the broth and I know I’ve added enough salt when the broth tastes a bit saltier than I actually want the finished product to be.

6. Cook the beans another half hour to hour. This lets them absorb the salt and acid (if you’ve added any).

And then they’re done! Scoop those things into a bowl (with some of the broth!) and eat with bread or tortillas. Or, chop up some veggies and toss them into the pot, turning the whole thing into the best stew you’ve ever had! Or anything else you want to do with beans, really!

Writing out this recipe makes it seem really long and complicated, but it really isn’t. Soak, cook background veggies, toss in beans and water, boil 10 minutes, low simmer until done, adding salt and citrus juice/vinegar at the end and then simmering a little longer.

I hope you make some delicious beans! I love beans!

Put em in the ground.
Yell at the ground.
No beans.
Buy baked beans.
Yell at tin.
No open tin.
Buy bag of beans.
Yell for a while.
They go moldy.
They’re soft, I eat, yum

I’m lazy, can’t plan for shit, and have picky eaters at home, so I usually do canned black beans.

I start with a small onion, dice it and cook that in some oil until it’s as done as you like. Other aromatics can go in now, but I usually skip 'em. Once the aromatics have opened up, I like to mix Better Than Bouillon paste in, just before I dump in the drained and rinsed beans. Any flavor of the paste works great. Stir it all in and before the paste starts to burn, add the beans and stir to coat in the flavor mixture. Put in whatever other spices you want, I like cumin and just a scant dash of cinnamon and cocoa powder. Add water, cover and simmer on low until the beans juuuust start to break down, about 20 min.

Recipe ratios are roughly:

2 cans of beans (15oz) : 1 small onion : 2 tsp BTB paste : 0.5 cup water

I do minimal planning ahead, which means I soak them overnight and then cook them for 30-35 minutes (depending on the type of bean) in an instant pot. I add salt, a clove of garlic, some oregano and a couple bay leaves to the cooking water, and that’s about it. In my experience most beans are well cooked in the 30-35 range, but if I’m doing black eyed peas (which are beans AFAIK) I’ll do a little bit less, like 25-30, because they seem to cook much faster in my experience.

Curries comrade, curried beans with additional veg is awesome. Also for plain beans adding nutritional yeast alongside the onions and mushrooms really amps up some good umami (also tomato sauce/paste).

There’s a lot of great ideas here for bean meals. If you have an air fryer, you can make delicious bean snacks as well. I really like this way of cooking chickpeas for a crunchy snack: https://www.myforkinglife.com/crispy-air-fryer-chickpeas/

To perhaps refine OP’s question, and as someone living on a budget who doesn’t cook much, anyone got more specific microwave ideas?

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I’m an avid bean eater, sometimes i have them as a part of every single meal of the day. I recommend building your week around a certain bean you plan on making for the week.

For example i’ll make a big pot of beans, for black and pinto I do: half an onion diced, which I fry for just a little bit then i my spices which are usually smoke paprika, pepper, salt, cumin and bay leaves. sauté that for about a minute then add your beans and water with enough water to cover the beans to your second knuckle. I add 2-3 whole cloves of garlic and I cut my other half of the onion in half(so quartered) and add that as well. I bring this to the boil and then simmer for a couple of hours, just keep tasting and stop them when they have the texture you like, beans tend to not change in texture to much after you turn the heat off so no need to pull them out sooner.

Now that you have your beans for the week you just have to find recipes to add the beans to. It’s not a bad idea to look at the chipotle menu for ideas of how you can switch up serving the beans. Let me know if you want any more specifics or ideas for things to do with other beans. I love red beans and rice for example, and beans and rice is a great combo for any meal.