Sous Vide - Beans

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Chris Klindt
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Joined: 2015-12-21 04:11
Sous Vide - Beans

I am very new to sous vide and want to learn.

So I found this recipe for sous vide beans in a 1 quart canning jar to finish in 6 hours at 190 F by a trained chef and book author. Works for me since I do not have to watch the beans.By the not this site!!!

So, I measured out 225 grams of beans (as per recipe) and placed in a wide mouth glass canning jar and filled the jar up with water to about 1/2 inch of the jar rim (as per recipe). The authors' picture looked like the bean was Navy beans by size.

Looking at the finished picture of the jar the beans looked like the beans were done done with water left over. Looks good!

The recipe was a failure with the beans under cooked and I finished on a cook top with more water to finish the beans. When you can take a bean and chew and spit out out into a kitchen sink and the bean rings back, the bean is under down (rocky).

So what did the author do? The author did not not the cook the recipe as published. The volume of bean in the jar was not 3 times with water at a minimum. 

I generally cook a bean at 4 times the weight with 3 times just to rehydrate.

So I did the recipe again today with weight of beans and weight of water and measured with accuracy on both beans weight and water weight. The author's recipe was done by weight on paper and published!

Let us work this backwards.

225 grams of beans
675 grams of water to fill the jar (which is would be what the recipe calls for) at 3x the weight of bean.
This only hydrates the bean with nothing left over to cook and finish the bean.

Now if you add 225 g beans of 675 g of water, the total of is 900 g of combined product will fit in the jar.
But this is just rehydration of the bean.

To finish to the bean, you need an extra 225 grams of water to finish the bean (4x). This will not fit in the jar since it weight is 1125 grams (more than the volume of the canning jar), the jar is only worth about 1 liter (1000 grams) to the rim.

This is just a rant and has nothing to with this site or Chef Jacob!