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How to Boil White Beans
Soak one pound dried white beans in two gallons cold water for fourteen hours. Drain well and place them in a rather small saucepan with two quarts cold water, one medium carrot cut in quarters, one medium white onion cut in half, and two leeks tied up with two branches parsley. Add one-ounce piece lean salt pork, one bean sound garlic, one teaspoon salt and half teaspoon pepper. Cover the pan and let simmer on a slow fire for one hour and a half. Remove all the ingredients, drain the beans on a sieve and use as required. Hash up the ounce of salt pork, mix and use with the beans.
A base preparation rather than a finished dish: plainly cooked beans, aromatics discarded, ready to be dressed, baked, puréed or added to soup. A few of the terms need translating.
- "One bean sound garlic"Most likely a piece of garlic about the size of a bean, i.e. a single clove, "sound" meaning unblemished. Peel it and leave it whole so it can be fished out with the rest.
- The soaking waterTwo gallons for a pound of beans is generous but harmless; the point is that the beans should never run short of water as they swell. A large bowl with the beans covered by four inches of cold water does the same job. Fourteen hours is long for modern dried beans, which are usually fresher; eight to twelve is enough.
- A slow fireA bare simmer, with the surface barely moving. A hard boil bursts the skins and turns the pot cloudy, which defeats the purpose of a clean cooking liquid and intact beans.
- "Rather small saucepan"A narrow, deep pan keeps the beans covered by liquid with the least evaporation, so they cook evenly rather than drying at the top. Two quarts of water to a pound of beans sits comfortably in a pan of about 3 quarts.
- Cooking timeAn hour and a half suits beans of reasonable age. Older stock can take two and a half hours or more, and hard water slows things further. Judge by a bean crushing smoothly against the roof of the mouth, not by the clock.
- Salt porkAn ounce is a flavouring, not a component. Supermarket salt pork is often very salty and quite fatty; blanch it a minute if it is heavily cured. The instruction to chop it and return it to the beans is worth following, as it is the only fat in the dish.
- The saltAdded at the start here, which is fine and does not toughen beans, contrary to the old rule. If your salt pork is aggressive, hold the teaspoon back and season at the end.
- The bouquetTwo leeks tied with parsley makes a removable bundle; kitchen string is the only equipment needed. Save the strained cooking liquid rather than discarding it, since it is a light, savoury bean broth.
- YieldA pound of dried beans gives roughly six cups cooked, enough as a base for six to eight servings.
This is kitchen groundwork of the sort that professional cookbooks carry: not a dish but a component, written so that a cook can produce it and turn it into cassoulet, a purée, a salad, or a garnish. The method is recognisably French — the carrot, onion, and tied bundle of leek and parsley are a bouquet garni in all but name, and the single ounce of salt pork and one clove of garlic show the restraint of a base preparation meant to be seasoned later. Dried white beans reached European cooking from the Americas in the sixteenth century and settled firmly in the southwest of France, where several varieties grown for slow cooking still carry local place names.