To make them, I give dry beans a cursory swish with tap water in a sieve. Next, I swirl some olive oil in the bottom of a dutch oven, where I press a halved onion and allow it to sear for a minute while I pop a few whole cloves from a head of garlic. Then, in go the rinsed beans and the garlic and enough water to cover them by a couple of inches. If I have any handy, I add a bay leaf or two, rosemary or thyme, or the last stems of parsley. Often I add a dried chili. I never measure anything and notably, I don’t bother with soaking anything overnight. I bring the whole pot to a boil and then I let the beans simmer away for an hour or two or three depending on the bean and my attentiveness. I typically add salt sometime after that initial boil. Sometimes I add the rind of parmesan (not technically vegetarian, but beloved).
Dried beans cooked like this, in a stock of my own making, are nearly always superior in taste and texture to canned beans, which of course does not stop me from also making canned beans. Sometimes I am not home all day to tend to a pot of beans, and often I am home all day and I forget to get the pot going, and always canned beans are cheap and fast, requiring only minor zhuzhing with various alliums and herbs. If the canned beans I’m cooking are black, I tend not to rinse them, but to simmer them in their own canned sauciness (and have lived to tell the tale). If the canned beans I’m cooking are garbanzo, I tend to rinse them and start fresh with a quick broth of my own making.
