Do You Have to Soak Dried Beans?

Read through your favorite bean recipes—whether it’s baked beans, pinto beans, black beans, or your family’s favorite recipe—and you will likely find differing opinions about soaking dried beans before cooking them. Some say that soaking the beans, whether overnight or a quick soak, makes them easier to digest and cook faster. Others skip the soaking altogether and get right to cooking.

To settle the debate, we reached out to a couple of bean experts. Steve Sando, founder and CEO of Rancho Gordo and co-author of “The Bean Book” admitted that “At Rancho Gordo, we rarely soak our beans, unless they are the larger varieties, like Royal Corona or Scarlet Runner.” He told Allrecipes, “We’ve found that soaking is not really necessary when you are cooking new-crop beans. Many cooks in Mexico don’t, most cooks in Europe do.”

On the flip side, Geraldo Bayona, corporate chef for the 1905 Family Of Restaurants, which includes Columbia Restaurant—Florida’s oldest restaurant—told Allrecipes that soaking beans definitely shortens their cooking time. According to Bayona, soaking beans “helps soften them since they are dried, and rehydrates and promotes more even cooking.” He shared with us that his team likes to soak their beans, 50 pounds at a time, in water and salt overnight.

Sando agrees that soaking does indeed speed up the cooking time but that “it delays it as well, since you’re not cooking, you’re soaking.” He knows that soaking is a common solution but he’s also had fresh dried beans harden from too much soaking. So if you’re going the soaking route, his tip is to “Soak in cool water at room temperature for two to six hours if you can. And if you can’t, just start cooking.”

Should You Change the Water?

If you do decide to soak your beans, one question that might pop up is whether or not you should change the water halfway through the soaking time. Sando, for one, opts to not.

“I don’t change the soaking water,” he told us. “For every food scientist who believes changing the water will help your digestion, there’s another who thinks the effect of changing the water is so minimal that it’s not worth it and can potentially mean you are throwing nutrients down the drain.”

Sandro added, “You will find that old-time bean cookers are rather adamant in their instructions and allow little room for discussion. If you want to soak for eight hours and then change the water, it’s not the end of the world. The main thing is that you’re cooking beans.”

The bottom line? If you don’t have the time to soak, that’s totally fine. Just remember that your beans may take slightly longer to cook.