Why You Might Want To Add Baking Soda To Your Beans

There's a few staples of any well-stocked pantry: rice, beans, and your favorite boxed mac and cheese, to name a few. But despite being a wonderfully high-protein and simple addition to your lunch or dinner, beans do have some downsides. One, they often cause gas or bloating due to the difficulty the human body has in digesting them. And two, sometimes the texture is just off — the beans might be too hard from sitting in storage for a long time, not be as creamy once cooked as you would like them to be, or simply have to spend a longer time cooking. But the surprising solution to these problems is likely already in your pantry — a pinch of baking soda.

Baking soda is an alkaline substance, meaning that it can neutralize acids, and when it's added to the cooking liquid (or soaking liquid) of beans, it helps them cook faster and in a way that is easier for our bodies to digest. This trick has long been passed down, but where it once may have been pushed aside as an old wives' tale, it's now been proven by some complex chemistry. An added bonus? Using baking soda to boil chickpeas helps to easily remove their skin, readying them for use in a delicious homemade hummus.

Let's get into the details: When should you add baking soda, and how much? For this, you essentially have two options — soak your dried beans overnight in a baking soda and water mixture, or boil them with baking soda and water the day of. When soaking, you only need to cover the beans with water by about 2 inches, and make sure you don't use too much baking soda — a little less than ¼ teaspoon for every cup of dried beans is a good ratio, and any more than that could give your beans a soapy flavor. 

Even this small amount of baking soda raises the pH of the water you're soaking or cooking your beans in, breaking down the oligosaccharide carbohydrates in the beans that are hard for our bodies to digest – as well as the pectin that hardens the shell of the beans. When choosing the day-of boiling method, you can simmer your beans with baking soda for anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple hours, depending on their softness, until they're ready to eat. The result? Less bloating and a yummier, creamier bean-eating experience. And this unassuming miracle tool's wonders never cease: After dinner, you can use the leftover baking soda to clean your oven, clean your produce, or even eliminate kitchen trash can odors.