Cooking Dried Beans

There are hundreds of varieties of dried beans, and if you add the rest of the legume family, including lentils and peas, there are well over two thousand varieties that we know of. There has been an amazing resurgence of interest in beans in recent years. We’ve come to understand not only how good they are for us (being the most inexpensive and most healthful source for protein, since they contain no associated fat), but also how they have myriad other positive health benefits. With their abundance of dietary fiber, they seem to help prevent a number of cancers as well as alleviate blood glucose problems.