Safe and tender Chickpeas and Pinto beans for trail meals

Abstract

Chickpeas and Pinto beans preparation to make DIY safe, tender and inexpensive precooked trail food. The testing is not about finding the best pulse for backpacking meals. Rather, it is about seeing if two very different dry raw pulses respond favourably to my simple method of preparing precooked dehydrated pulses as trail food. If they respond well, I think it should indicate that most pulses that we might use for convenient, efficient and nutritious backpacking food can be prepared this way and be free of the multiple toxins present in many raw pulses.

I conclude that they are equally suited to this preparation method. However, one pulse holds its shape well and is more suited to making trail nibbles. The other pulse splits apart, a bit like popcorn. and break up easily. This allows them to rehydrate quickly, almost instantly. This makes them ideal for efficiently preparing hot or cold evening meals at camp. The different attributes of each pulse complement one another. Read more to see how this investigation pans out.

Introduction to Chickpea and Pinto bean preparation

In a previous post, I described my investigation into the tenderness, flavour, and functionality of DIY-prepared Chickpeas as trail food. It focused on finding a suitable substitute for precooked and dried Pinto beans as described in Jupiter’s video. These beans are so popular and available in America, but, frustratingly, are not easily or economically available in Australia.

I had recently stocked up with cheap, bulk raw dried Chickpeas and Pinto beans from a bulk food warehouse. So, with some refinement, it was time to test my Chickpea preparation method on raw dried Pinto beans. If successful, it should indicate that this method would be suitable for all commonly available pulses that could be candidates for precooked and dehydrated backpacking food.

Soaking time. In my previous tests, I soaked the Chickpeas for about 8h prior to boiling. This was a big improvement on my rather hurried method of ‘no-soaking before pressure cooking’ that I had previously used. A 24h soaking duration is more traditional, probably more thorough and may remove more ‘farting compounds’ as discussed later. It certainly can do no harm.

I found that the 24h interval between starting soaking and starting pressure cooking is most convenient for me. My tinkering with food preparation is usually done in the evening, leaving the entire daylight hours for real Sapiens outside work. This 1-day interval makes it easy, for a supposedly ‘timeless and scatter-brained’ person like me, to schedule the subsequent cooking at every suitable time the following evening.

Some not-so-nice chemistry of Chickpeas and Pinto beans

Oligosaccharide and farting. In this publication, they indicate that soaking beans before cooking makes the resultant beans more tender. While soaking is not essential, it can remove 75-90% of complex sugars (oligosaccharides) that are somewhat difficult to digest and can cause ‘wind’.

“Now, I prefer the direct term farting as it seems to be much more poetically descriptive and relevant when confined, often with company, to a tiny backpacking tent in wild and windy weather. Nevertheless, my tent rules are lenient and I tell my companions that we all have a grace count of 200 farts/person before penalties apply, because we are all eating dehydrated foods with lots of fibre content. The penalty, by the way, is to be made to cook the next shared meal.”

Bitter green pea taste and potentially toxic phytonutrients. In my previous post about precooked Chickpeas, I found that my culinary method eliminated the bitter pea taste from the precooked Chickpeas. In contrast, the bitterness persisted in the commercial roasted Chickpeas, which I used for comparison.

According to this publication,(bitter tast) these bitter tastes are associated with phytonutrients* that can be beneficial for human health, (consumer understanding) by preventing cancer and cardiovascular health issues. However, they can also be toxic. Based on consumer preference, plant breeders have reduced the bitter flavours while food processors have used processes that de-bitter the product.

Hopefully, the absence of any bitter green pea taste in my DIY precooked and dehydrated Chickpeas or Pinto beans will mean that the phytonutrients have been reduced to a safe level.

Note*: The term phytonutrients is a bit perplexing to me. It breaks down into phyto (meaning related to plants, in or from plants) and nutrient (any substance that plants or animals need in order to live or grow). However, phytonutrients can include antinutrients that are sometimes a problem for people who have a very limited diet, particularly involving pulses.

Lectins- even more pulse toxins. Yet another potentially harmful entity? Not really, as they are already covered under Phytonutrients and antinutrients. However, I think it is a much more specific term and lectins are worthy of special attention. The problem with these proteins, called lectins, is described in this post titled: The Silent Danger of Undercooked Beans.

In plants, lectins are thought to protect the plant by causing pain or death to some animals that may eat them. So it is understandable that the lectins, which are potentially harmful to us, should be deactivated before we eat them. The deactivation can be achieved by thorough cooking, fermentation, malting and sprouting. Cooking seems to be the simplest option for DIY precooked and dehydrated trail food.

Here is another post titled How to Avoid Lectin Poisoning. They point out that not all lectins are toxic, but the toxic lectin in beans is are “….utterly destroyed by proper cooking”.

Here is another practical kitchen post about: How to avoid food poisoning from lectin in undercooked beans. They indicate that a 10 minute boiling after soaking should be done before the formal thorough cooking process is commenced. I don’t quite see the need for this extra step, if the cooking is thorough it should deactivate the lectin.

Recommended cooking times for various pulses. In the above post, they recommend the following cooking times: Chickpeas (cook 1.5 to 2.5 hours, pressure cook 15-20 minutes) and Pinto beans (cook 1.5 hours, pressure cook 10 minutes).” This repeated safety theme is comforting.” They also provide definitive cooking times for other pulses if you are interested.

“In my first post, I was ignorant of this critical information about lectin activity. I was lucky, as I judged the pressure cooking time to be 20 minutes, just from years of cooking experience. Then my focus was tenderness and flavour. Food poisoning or death was far from my mind and well,……farting was just part of the deal when eating many unprocessed food with loads of fibre content. Consequently, I used 20 minutes of pressure cooking of Chickpeas in my test that I reported in my first post. The dried cooked Chickpeas were soft and easy to chew, but a little slow to hydrate for trail meals and they had no bitter taste of phytonutrients, lectins or antinutrients or ill effect on me.

For the tests in this current post, I will use 30 minutes pressure cooking time for both the Chickpeas and the Pinto beans ,…… just to be sure to be sure of deactivating those pesky pulse toxins and to make them more tender and possibly faster to hydrate. So, according to the above rules, I would be ‘over-cooking’ by 50-100% for the Chickpeas and 300% for the Pinto beans.

“Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret. I was tired from a big day of physical farm work, and I ‘stuffed up’ the labels on my rather complex test samples. So it was only proper to repeat the simplified test once more for the current post. However, it did give me the confidence that my method was heading in the right direction.”

In this failed test, the Chickpeas held together beautifully and were soft and chewy. Alas, the Pinto beans did fall apart like popcorn. However, I did see this failure as a great success as it created a dehydrated trail food that was ‘supper willing’ to hydrate to make a very quick trail meal that would be made up of creamy soft bean particles, hopefully with ‘bugger-all’ farting polysaccharides or lectins left in them.”

Consequently, I have settled on overnight soaking and these excessive cooking times for the tests in the current post. As I have implied many times in my posts, knowing the orthodox wisdom of others is important, but strictly following their rules may stifle innovation. “

A precautionary approach to pulse toxins or antinutrients in through hike trail food. Occasional low-level doses of pulse toxins may not be harmful in normal domestic living with a varied diet. They may even be beneficial. However, DIY dehydrated, precooked pulses (or the commercial equivalent) are often intended to be the main food for many consecutive days on the trail, as described in Jupiter’s informative video on Pinto beans.

Reducing the risk of unsatisfactory nutrition from a pulse-dominated diet is described in this article titled: How to Reduce Antinutrients in Foods.

Consequently, it would be the safest strategy to use pulse-based food that largely eliminates the bitter taste and hopefully has low toxicity and a low farting index. Protracted soaking and thorough high-temperature cooking in a pressure cooker seems to be an effective way to manage these potential toxins. The better texture and flavour is a bonus, even if we forego those possible health benefits while on the trail.

Experimental culinary processes used to prepare tender dehydrated Chickpeas and Pinto beans for safe precooked trail food

To test the comparative effect of the above culinary factors on texture and flavour, I prepared precooked and dehydrated Pinto beans and Chickpeas by the following method:

• Soaking in water for 24h and draining off the water,
• Boiling in a pressure cooker (~120 °C) for 30 minutes at full pressure and draining the water, and,
• Immediate dehydration at 75 °C ..

Results, discussion and conclusions

Table1. The effect of culinary procedure on the texture and taste of precooked Chickpeas and Pinto beans.

		Pulse properties after processing
Pulse type	Combined experimental  processes	Bitterness	Crushing texture	Crushed particles	Additional flavour	Hydration speed
Chickpea	Soaking+Boiling+dehydration	absent	soft	granular	none	fast
Pinto bean	Soaking+Boiling+dehydration	absent	soft	granular	none	very fast
Chickpea	Commercial Single Roasting	strong	very soft	very fine	nutty	very slow
Chickpea	Commercial  Double Roasting	medium	very soft	very fine	nutty	very slow

Key to the experimental culinary processes: The single or double roasted Chickpeas were commercially made products that were included for comparison with the properties of the DIY pulses after processing

General. Safe and tender precooked and dehydrated Chickpeas and Pinto beans, can be DIY prepared by the following simple steps. 24h soaking followed by 30 minute pressure cooking followed immediately (for food safety reasons) by dehydration at high a temperatiure (~75C).

This method can produce pleasant-tasting and tender pulses without a noticeable ‘bitter pea lectin taste’. When thoroughly dried, these processed pulses can be effectively stored in a sealed container without noticeable deterioration.

Given the substantial difference between Chickpeas and Pinto beans, these DIY processing methods should be effective for a wide range of peas and beans other than those, such as lentils, that fall apart quickly with cooking.

Benefits of thorough soaking. The long soaking time caused the pulses to double in size and weight. It did not remove the bitter lectin taste but the swelling probably caused them to be more tender when cooked.

Supposedly the soaking will remove the most of the oligosaccharides that are, in part, responsible for bean eaters farting. I have no objective test for this. “Maybe someone might be able to constitute a blind bean farting panel?” Although I have no evidence for it, I think the oligosaccharides would be removed during thorough cooking, by boiling in water.

The bitter lectin taste that persists in the commercial roasted Chickpeas may indicate that they have not been soaked or boiled in their preparation.

The changed Chickpea and Pinto bean structure. The processed Chickpeas swelled to double their original size when raw, but they largely maintained their spherical shape. They were delightfully soft and easy to eat. They would make excellent trail nibbles, with or without additional flavour coating.

In contrast, the Pinto beans fell apart like popcorn during the dehydration step in the processing. This breakup was likely because they were cooked three times longer than is normally recommended. Nevertheless, in this state, they are crunchy and delightful to eat and they can also be easily further broken down into crumbs to make trail meals that will rehydrate quickly (as discussed later).

The breakup of the Pinto beans during dehydration meant that they dried much more quickly than the Chickpeas, which stayed largely intact. This means that considerable care should be taken to ensure that the insides of the Chickpeas are fully dried.

I find that after the pulses feel and appear to be quite dry on the ouside, they still will have residual moisture on the inside. At this stage, they can be safely ‘rested’ in the dehydrator for many hours while the residual moisture migrates outwards. Then they can be dried in short pre-timed bursts until they reach a constant weight.

“This strategy also makes it possible to schedule most of the drying to be done with free solar-generated electricity or the lowest tariff power from the grid”

Lastly, the dehydrated Chickpeas and Pinto beans macerated easily into fine crumbs in a food processor.

Loss of pulse dry matter during cooking. The dry matter loss from the pulse during processing was 15% for Chickpeas and 30% for Pinto beans. These are quite significant losses, but I think they can be justified by the safety, tenderness, rapid rehydration and low cost of the raw pulses ( 3-4 AUD/kg) that can make these foods. “The ‘lost solids’ can be used as nourishing soup stock if you like.”

Deactivation of lectins. During the processing, I cautiously tasted the pulses at each step. Before soaking, both pulses had a strong bitter taste. The bitterness was on the seed coat of the Chickpea and in the cotyledons of the seed. The smooth and shiny outside of the Pinto bean was tasteless, but the bitterness of the cotyledons was similar to that of the Chickpeas. I also tasted the water extract during the initial soaking and the pressure-cooking water. There was no noticeable bitter lectin taste in either.

After soaking, the cotyledons became crunchy soft (like mature fresh green peas), and the bitter pea taste persisted. After the boiling, the bitter taste of lectins was absent, as it was after dehydration. I think this indicates that the strong boiling step thoroughly deactivated the lectins and makes them safe for eating. “I wonder just what process was used to make the commercially roasted Chickpeas that have a reduced but still distinctive bitter taste?”

Previously, it was rather scary to think that my favourite Chickpeas that I eat so often and Pinto beans, that I had recently purchased in bulk, have lots of lectins. However, not all lectins are toxic to most of us. Some are even good for our health. Also, here are some very comforting words from a post titled: How to Avoid Lectin Poisoning, “So, basically, it appears that cooking beans to the point where they might be considered edible is more than sufficient to destroy virtually all of the…activity of lectins.” 

Rehydration of Chickpeas and pinto beans to make evening trail meals. Both the DIY cooked and dehydrated Chickpeas and Pinto beans were rehydrated quickly by about 16 minutes. The macerated crumbs of Chickpeas and Pinto beans softened in about 7 minutes. These times compare favourably with those indicated in Jupiter’s video (commercial precooked whole Pinto beans 1h, and commercial refried Pinto beans (5 minutes)). I expect that cooking would speed the process even more.

Although soft when soaked, the Chickpeas maintained a granular texture. In contrast, the pinto bean cotyledon material became creamy soft, while the seed skin was somewhat crisp. Both pulses would be pleasant to eat with some suitable additional flavours added. Both pulse types will be in my trail tucker bag, and they can be eaten without further preparation in emergencies.

Lessons from the experimental stuff-up. It would be easy to just hide my failed experiment where I stuffed up the lables. However, this may bury good lessons. The failed pulse cooking experiment was complex with 10 treatment bundles. This complexity contributed to the stuff-up as did my tiredness. However, it did show that some of the treatments were absolutely ineffective for preparing tender and lectin-free trail food. So here is a brief report. The combinations of culinary preparations that I applied to Chickpeas and Pinto beans are described below:

1. Roasting raw pulses,
2. Roasting raw pulses with oil coating,
3. Soaking raw pulses, pressure cooking and then dehydration,
4. Soaking raw pulses, pressure cooking, dehydration and then roasting,
5. Soaking raw pulses, pressure cooking, dehydration and then roasting with oil coating

Treatments 1 and 2 produced hard, inedible pulses with a strong lectin taste. Treatment 3 produced soft pulses with no lectin taste. Treatment 4 and 5 produced pulses that were similar to 3, but the roasting did not improve the texture or flavour noticeably.

I did not crack the method of making the elusive fine texture of the commercially roasted Chickpeas. However, it encouraged me to repeat method 3 without stuffing up my labels and report it in this post.

Safe dehydrated trail food from Chickpeas and Pinto beans without toxic lectins. My investigations showed me that there are considerable concentrations of lectins in most of the natural plant-based food that dominates my diet. “Even my DIY wholemeal flour has significant lectin in it. After my investigation, I can now recognise this bitterness. However, the taste is absent in the many cooked foods made from it. Similarly, I can now recognise the bitter lectin taste in commercial roasted peanuts and many other raw foods. “Yes, they are in all the best natural foods and they are perfectly safe if we cook the food to make it reasonably edible.”

I think this post has grown long enough, so I will deal with making a variety of tasty backpacking nibbles and meals, with precooked Chickpeas and Pinto beans in a subsequent post.

Tim