HOW TO PREPARE THE LEGUMES

CALCULATE DOSES

Measure the volume of vegetables with a cup, so you can add the right amount of water during cooking.

SIFT

In the packaging of legumes it may happen to find small pebbles, earth or fragments of pods. Sift the dried vegetables with your fingers to remove these impurities.

WASH 

Rinse them carefully with a strainer or in a colander under running water.

SOAKING IS CATEGORAL

It’s a “micro-cook” because it makes the proteins contained in legumes more digestible, avoids the annoying “sense of swelling”, and helps to reduce those substances contained in legumes that prevent the mineral absorption.

QUICK SOAKING

If you are in a hurry and have forgotten to soak legumes, you can occasionally resort to this escamotage:

• sift and wash the vegetables carefully
• put them in a pot of hot water, let them boil for 15 minutes
• turn off the heat, drain the vegetables and throw away the water of this first phase of cooking where there are most of “antinutrients” that cause swelling and do not allow the absorption of minerals
• rinse the vegetables again very well
• put them to cook in a pan with a new dose of hot water, and 1 or 2 cm of kombu seaweed for every 70 g of uncooked legumes
• finish cooking.

CLASSIC SOAKING

• After sieving and washing the vegetables, place them in a glass bowl
• add clean water, covering the legumes abundantly, so that during the soaking process, rehydrating increases in volume (1 cup of vegetables, 2 to 4 cups of water)
• eliminate the legumes that come to the surface because they are devoid of nutritional validity, cover the bowl during soaking.
• Soy beans should be placed in the fridge during soaking to prevent their fermentation.
• The soaking water must be warm or warm and acidified with lemon juice or apple cider vinegar. The dose of lemon or apple vinegar is 1 teaspoon per 300 g of legumes.
• Salt is not indicated in soaking legumes because it hardens them, in fact it should not be added even in the cooking water.

Here you will find the table with the soaking times for each type of legume.

RINSE

At the end of the soak, drain the vegetables, and wash them.

The soaking water should never be used because the legumes have released the “anti-nutrient” substances.

COOK THEM THUS

• In the cooking water of the legumes add the aga kombu (1 or 2 cm for every 70 g of raw legumes equal to a portion) that has the ability to make the vegetables softer and more digestible and enrich them with useful minerals, to end cooking the seaweed can be rinsed and reused or eaten with legumes.
• Never salt the cooking water of the vegetables, the salt hardens the vegetables.
• Do not use bicarbonate because it depletes vitamins and proteins.
• Start cooking the vegetables gently and bring it to a low heat.
• If you want to speed up the cooking of the vegetables you can use the pressure cooker.

In this table you find the dose of water necessary for cooking every type of legume and cooking times with a normal pot and pressure cooker.

DO NOT BUT THE COOKING WATER YOU CAN PREPARE AQUAFABA OR USE IT AS BROTH FOR THE SUOPS.

Here find my post on aquafaba.