Slow-Cooked Camp Beans
Dry beans, water, salt, and a stove you leave alone. Best on a rest day.
- calories
- 320
- weight
- 3.2 oz
- cal / oz
- 100
- protein
- 20 g
- serves
- 4, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 90 min
- total time
- 100 min
- water
- 900 ml boiled
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Canister stove
- Liquid fuel
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
- Gluten free
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Grab and go
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Dry beans | 1 lb | pinto, black, great northern, or garbanzo |
|---|---|---|
| Water | about 3.5 L total | soak water plus cook water |
| Salt | 2 tsp | added at the end |
Method
- At home or in camp the night before, pick through the beans and throw out stones and split, discolored ones.
- Cover the beans with water by two inches in your pot. Bring it to a boil, cut the heat, lid it, and leave it eight hours or overnight.
- Drain the soak water and refill with fresh water, again two inches over the beans. Dump the soak water well away from camp.
- Bring to a boil, then hold the lowest flame that keeps it barely moving. Lid on. Check every twenty minutes and top up water so the beans stay covered.
- Start tasting at 60 minutes. They are done when a bean crushes flat against the roof of your mouth with no chalk in the middle. Expect 60 to 120 minutes depending on the bean and how old it is.
- Kill the heat, stir in the salt, and let it sit five minutes before eating.
- Kidney beans only: boil them hard for ten full minutes before dropping to a simmer. They carry a toxin that a slow simmer does not destroy.
This started as a slow cooker recipe, which is a device you do not have in the woods. The translation is a lidded pot on the lowest flame your stove will hold, or set at the edge of a fire’s coals rather than over the flames. Same principle: gentle, steady heat for a long time, so the beans hydrate evenly instead of blowing their skins off in a hard boil.
The overnight soak is the part that saves fuel, and fuel is the real cost here. Boiling briefly and then letting the beans sit off the heat does the same work as a cold soak in a third of the time, and it cuts the cook down to an hour or so. Salt goes in at the end, not the start, because salted water slows the skins from softening. Dump the soak water rather than cooking in it, which takes the edge off the digestive fallout.
Packing
Beans go in a zip bag with the salt taped to the outside so you cannot dump it in early. Bring a lid that actually seals; the whole method depends on trapping heat. This eats fuel, so it belongs on a car-camping trip or a basecamp day with a full canister to spare.
Variations
- Cook a double batch, eat half, and mash the rest with oil into refried beans the next night.
- A bouillon cube in the cook water turns the pot liquid into broth worth drinking.
- Dried onion flakes, cumin, and chile powder in the last fifteen minutes cost almost no weight.
https://dontwastethecrumbs.com/slow-cooker-beans