Nutrition
| Per 100 g | Per 1 oz (28 g) | |
|---|---|---|
| Energy | 346 kcal | 98 kcal |
| Protein | 23.4 g | 6.6 g |
| Fat | 1.3 g | 0.4 g |
| saturated | 0.3 g | 0.1 g |
| Carbohydrate | 41.5 g | 11.8 g |
| sugars | 0.8 g | 0.2 g |
| Fibre | 22.8 g | 6.5 g |
| Sodium | 5 mg | 1 mg |
Estimated from the ingredients, for the finished dried product. Actual values vary with the produce you use and how far you dry it.
Ingredients
- 1.7 kg canned black beans
Instructions
- Drain the tin and rinse the beans until the water coming off them runs clear rather than grey. That thick liquid is starch, and starch left on the skins glues beans to the tray and to each other.
- Shake the sieve hard and then let it stand for ten minutes. Beans hold a drop of water in the dimple where they joined the pod, and that drop is the slowest one to leave.
- Tip them onto a tea towel and roll them gently to take the surface film off. A wet skin steams rather than dries, and steaming splits more of them than you want.
- Spread them one bean deep on mesh. They are round enough to roll into piles the moment the fan starts, so a lipped mesh tray is worth using if you have one.
- Dry at 52 °C for 10 hours. Some will burst their skins and curl — that is normal, and the split ones actually come back faster than the whole ones.
- They are finished when a bean cannot be dented with a fingernail and a cooled one rattles rather than thuds on the bench. A bean that squashes is still soft inside and will mould in the bag.
- Cool them fully in a single layer. Warm beans heaped in a container sweat, and one damp bean at the bottom of a camping bag ruins a whole meal.
- Sealed in a jar or a vacuum bag in the dark they hold for a year. Cover them with boiling water for twenty minutes to bring them back; they will not return to a firm whole bean, which is why these belong in soup, burritos and chilli rather than in a salad.
