The Crucial Thing To Remember When Cooking With Unrinsed Canned Beans

Beans are an affordable and nutritious pantry staple, and there are countless ways to incorporate them into your favorite recipes. While you can use the dried kind, these take significantly longer to prepare than those that come in a can. However, before draining your canned beans, keep in mind that the juice can be helpful in many ways. One of its uses is boosting the saltiness in your cooking.

Because the juice from canned beans is often high in sodium, it's crucial not to add much (if any) more salt to the beans themselves. This high salinity is partly why many recipes instruct that you drain and rinse the beans first. However, keeping that extra salt and starchiness can reduce the amount of other ingredients you need to make the recipe.

If you're watching your sodium intake, be mindful when using canned beans, as they can contain up to 100 times the amount of sodium as those that are dried and cooked. Rinsing can mitigate this, but some of the beans' salty flavor and starch — which can come in handy for flavoring and thickening soups, for example — will also wash down the drain.

Canned beans (and their juice) are an excellent primary ingredient, though they can also play a supplementary role. Canned kidney beans are perfect for making chili, though many recipes suggest draining them first. Instead, try reserving some of that bean juice in case the chili needs a bit of thickening at the end of the cooking process. You can use it to replace some of the recipe's salt, plus it will give the final dish better texture.

You can also use canned navy beans to make your own homemade baked beans from scratch. While many recipes suggest starting with the dried version, this process can take over 24 hours to complete correctly. If you want to save time, canned beans can work — as long as you know the proper ratios. Just 1 pound of dried navy beans is equivalent to around four 15-ounce cans, though the exact ratio depends on the type of beans you're using.

Of course, outside of all the other delicious uses for canned beans (not to mention lentils), the juice they're packed in can be equally valuable, if not more so. The juice in a can of chickpeas is called aquafaba and can be used for many purposes. For example, aquafaba can be used as a vegan egg substitute for recipes like cakes, cocktails, and meringues. The flavor and texture aren't quite the same as eggs, but the ingredient is similar enough to provide pleasing results.