Lesson 18: BEANS

A comprehensive chef’s guide to bean cookery.

Welcome to beans’ favorite time of year, wintertime. This guide gathers everything I’ve learned—soaking, sprouting, simmering, seasoning—to help you make the creamiest, sweetest, most digestible beans of your life. Consider it a chef’s deep dive into an ingredient that deserves more care than we usually give it.

They love winter, they warm up the home with their long cooking process. If you’re buying them from a farmer, they would’ve just been harvested in late fall. And you’re generally home more, so having them going while you check on them here and there isn’t a big deal. Really really thought the best are fresh off the vine during a few weeks in early to late fall when they are newly havested, before they are dried for long term sorrage.

Cooking beans are like house plants, kids and men… they thrive with a little neglect.