Saturday Cooking School

This week's ridiculous episode with baked beans, chronicled in irritated detail in yesterday's post, resulted in two smart women who know what they are talking about telling me what I did wrong.

Hooray for smart women.

And now, so we can all be smart people ourselves--at least when it comes to baked beans--I will share their wisdom with you.

The MiL was the first to weigh in, telling me it was most likely the vinegar that was the fatal ingredient. The MiL actually worked at the famous Boston restaurant Durgin Park when she lived there. She has eaten and made many authentic baked beans, and I should have asked her before I made any baked beans, obviously.

Confirming evidence came from a reader, Tara, who very kindly e-mailed me to let me know that she "knows usually random science trivia" (her words), and told me this:

. . . while the age of the navy beans might have been an issue, it was likely more the addition of the vinegar to the sauce pre-baking that caused the eternally unbaking baked beans problem. Acids do something to the seed coat (outer layer) of beans that makes it tough and generally impervious to water. It's like putting a rain coat on each bean. So if you add some vinegar at the start of the cooking, you can cook forever and still have nice firm almost-uncooked beans. The solution is easy -- just add the vinegar (or whatever other acid you might be adding, like that squeeze of lemon juice) after the beans have hit the texture you want. Naturally, this doesn't help your current pot of beans, but next time! :)


So now we all know: Stay away from the vinegar until your beans are soft, or they will never GET soft.

The end.