If you have worked for a chef or have a grandmother
from Tuscany or a mother-in-law from South America, you
may have at one point been told never to add salt to your
beans until they were completely cooked, lest you prevent
their tough skins from softening fully. In fact, in some
restaurants I worked in, it was thought that overcooked
beans could actually be saved by salting them after cooking.
To think!
But how often have you actually cooked two batches of
beans side by side, one soaked and cooked in salted water
and the other soaked and cooked in plain water? Chances
are, never. And now you’ll never have to. I present to you
the results of just such a test:
Salting beans can help tenderize their skins, preventing
blowouts.Both batches of beans were cooked just until they were
fully softened, with none of the papery toughness of
undercooked skins (about 2 hours for both batches, after an
overnight soak). As you can clearly see, the unsalted beans