Pintos: To soak or not to soak, that is the question.

Milkduds

Milkduds

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So having just recently gotten my Instant Pot, the first thing I cooked was pintos. According to the information on the net I didn't have to soak them and the pressure cooker would cook them just fine. All true. However, the texture didn't seem to be quite right. Nothing to complain about, I just thought they could be a bit better. So I am embarking on a testing phase. I will do the pintos with a soak first and then the Instant Pot. After that I will compare with soaking and not soaking with the Crock pot. I am not bothering with top of the stove since I tend to burn them that way. Anyone ever tried this and what do you prefer?
Before acquiring the Instant Pot I always cooked them in the crock pot without soaking. I am not concerned with the cooking time so much as the texture. The pintos cooked in the pressure cooker seemed to have a little bit less firmness and "bite" than my usual method of cooking.
This testing phase should take quite awhile as that is a lot of beans to eat. :D
 
Milkduds said:
The pintos cooked in the pressure cooker seemed to have a little bit less firmness and "bite" than my usual method of cooking.
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I thought you were going to say this the other way round - that the beans had too much bite using the Instant Pot.

I confess that my usual method of cooking pinto beans is to heat up a tin of them. I can't recall how much 'bite' the tinned ones have though. I tend to think beans should be quite soft - but maybe I don't understand how they are normally cooked in the USA. In the UK, tinned pre-cooked beans are very cheap and generally good quality so I don't very often cook them from scratch.

Hey! Bravo for embarking on this mission Milkduds - I love this sort of analytic approach to cooking. :okay:
 
Definitely keep us posted. I ran out of refried beans not long ago and we have been trending Southwest US and Tex Mex sporadically. We never seem to be able to use a whole can and half of it goes bad in the frig before we get a taste for Tex Mex again. I know I can make refried beans out of pintos and I could make very small batches that would work quite well. Although, I don't have an Instapot, I do have a the slow cooker...do pinto beans freeze well after being cooked?
 
On the bean texture, are you salting the water when you cook them? That'll toughen them a bit.

Refried beans - I do a sort of homemade version at home using canned pintos:

A little bacon grease in a small skillet, a little water, some garlic and onion, in with the beans (along with their juice), then simmer, and while it's simmering, mash away, until you get the texture you like.
 
I have a can of pintos in the pantry, I had already planned on using them for this purpose. I plan on adding a little half n half (tip courtesy of my cousin's Mexican wife) along with some partially rendered bacon pieces in lieu of the bacon grease. But even a can of pintos is too much (I eat very small portions) and I hate waste, so in the future it makes more sense to cook and freeze whatever I am not going to use (if they withstand freezing okay). I would think it wouldn't make much difference if I am going to mash them anyway.
 
I freeze them all the time. They freeze beautifully.

Also, butter, olive oil, and coconut oil taste great in pintos, refried or otherwise. You don't have to have bacon.
 
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Milkduds said:
The pintos cooked in the pressure cooker seemed to have a little bit less firmness and "bite" than my usual method of cooking.
This testing phase should take quite awhile as that is a lot of beans to eat. :D
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How long did you cook them for in the Instant Pot and what method of pressure release did you use? It sounds to me like you maybe overcooked them - 1 minute either way can make a huge difference!

We grow and dry our own pinto beans (we call them borlotti) and I've not found any real difference between cooking them soaked or unsoaked - apart from the obvious one (that soaked ones cook much quicker). One thing to remember with beans is that you always need to factor time for a natural release with beans.....otherwise you risk them popping!
 
I did the natural release and yes, some of them did pop. The beans were just not as plump and tender as they should be. I was not in a hurry, I was just testing the instant pot and followed the instructions to the letter. The beans are fresh as well. I believe I cooked them for 45 minutes and then did the natural release. So it sounds like I overcooked and should cook for a little less time.
 
CraigC said:
For refried beans, Manteca is your friend!
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Amen! i have some that I use for tamales but got out of the habit of putting it in beans. I usually use olive oil because it's a lot healthier.
 
Milkduds said:
I did the natural release and yes, some of them did pop. The beans were just not as plump and tender as they should be. I was not in a hurry, I was just testing the instant pot and followed the instructions to the letter. The beans are fresh as well. I believe I cooked them for 45 minutes and then did the natural release. So it sounds like I overcooked and should cook for a little less time.
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If you cooked them for 45 minutes then I think they were probably overcooked - the fact that some of them popped even with NPR also suggests this. I don't know which instructions you were following, but I usually use these timing charts from Hip Pressure Cooking as a starting point (they recommend 25 minutes for unsoaked borlotti/pinto beans).
 
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