Flashback to my mother buying entire brown cardboard shipping boxes of cereal out of the back storeroom of the grocery store and storing it in her basement pantry ๐โค๏ธ
For those of you who have the luxury of buying in bulk, what do you buy in bulk when it's cheap? Do you do it because it's always going up in price, because it's seasonally expensive, or because it's a staple item that you always need. To what extreme do you go with your bulk purchase?
Examples from my own life,
- toothpaste and mouthwash, buy when cheap store extra tubes, usually no more than 5-10
- cleaning supplies, chemicals and towels. Enough to keep a backups closet stocked.
- pasta, probably have enough for a couple of months
- coffee, ten to fifteen bags
- shoes, buy multiples if I find ones I like
- consumable hobby items like bike intertubes
The basic idea is to identify the items I will almost certainly decide to buy then snag them up when they're at their cheapest to achieve long term frugality.
how do you store your dry beans? I always end up with my beans getting too dry and they stay hard even after lots of cooking, dry beans have become something I can't buy in bulk and only fresh.
Long term storage (years) in mylar bags with oxygen absorbers in the bags with the beans. Seal it up and store it in a specific pantry tote for dry goods.
Short term storage (less than 1 year) is in 1/2 gallon mason jars. I really want to get some of the 2-gallon anchor hocking sealable jars so that I don't have to constantly refill my 1/2 gallon jars.
Quick tip on the super-dry beans: you need to soak them way longer than normal. For "regular" pintos, I soak overnight, which is 8 to 10 hours and then cook as you normally prefer.
For really old, super hard beans, I soak in the fridge for 2 days or more. 1 day soaked, rinse all the beans and refill the water, and then one more day soaking. 48 hours. Then, cook as normal. You will definitely notice a quality drop in beans that are 10 to 15 years old. Let your spices and / or vegetables that you add do some heavy lifting for flavor.
My go-to recipe for old beans is to make more of a thin sippable broth, so a lot of my beans get pureed after they are cooked, so that may also be a factor.
Good luck!
so, I always soak the beans overnight, and they don't soften even after more than a full day of cooking - it's almost like the cooking prevents it from further softening.
I'm not sure I've tried soaking 48 hours, though, and I would be happy to make them into a refried bean or cooked into a starchy soup - anything that doesn't leave hard beans would be great.
Thanks for this advice and for helping me, I'll try it out - this is giving me some confidence to try bulk beans storage again. I usually keep them in mason jars with the oxygen absorbers like you describe, so I'll try that again.
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Your beans are still dry after soaking them for 24 hours before cooking? Or you just rely on the cooking itself to hydrate them?
yes, even with soaking before cooking they remain dry. Even after boiling for an hour, cooling, and then simmering for hours. Even after simmering for multiple days - they just remain hard and never fully soften or cook.