Homemade Ready

I just love beans, I really do. They are a good source of plant-based protein, with the added bonuses of being tasty and economical. While I always keep beans on hand in my pantry in both canned and dried versions, my favorite approach to cooking with beans is to cook dried beans in big batches, then store them in smaller, convenient portions in my freezer.  I find this to be a cheap and easy way to have quick access to beans for use in soups, stews, chili, side dishes, salads, and for stretching out the ground meat in recipes. The thing I wonder, though, is how did cooking dried beans get to be such a controversial and (unnecessarily) complicated subject? Although grannies and cowboy cooks have been cooking and eating beans as a staple food for many long years, this practice has become something that now seems to intimidate many home cooks.  It’s understandable why this is, however, when you read the many conflicting articles out there about the hows and whys of cook...