The Secret to Cooking Beans the Right Way So You're Not Gassy All Day

📖 Get La Cocina de Bertha, every recipe in this kitchen written down (500+ pages): https://berthascookbook.com Mija, close the door. In my mother's house we ate beans every single day, and nobody was sitting very still at their desk afterward. Here are the small things the old cooks did to the pot, and at the end, the real secret no pill can do for you. ⭐ WHY BEANS GIVE YOU GAS A bean carries sugars your body cannot break down. They travel to the end of the line, the good bacteria eat them, and the gas is the smoke from that feast. So: get some sugars out before the pot, cook the rest all the way, and teach your belly the rest. ⭐ THE TRICKS 1. SOAK overnight, 2 to 3 inches of cool water over the beans, and THROW THAT WATER AWAY. Cook in fresh water. (page 91) Forgot? Boil 2 minutes, cover, sit 1 hour, pour off, start fresh. 2. RINSE a full minute in a colander. Canned beans too: pour off that thick liquid and rinse. 3. COOK THEM ALL THE WAY. Lowest gentle simmer, lid tilted. Done when FIVE beans in a row are creamy to the center. (page 94) The gray foam is NOT the gas. It is harmless proteins. Skim it only for looks. 4. EPAZOTE: one sprig fresh or 1 spoon dried, last 30 minutes. Tradition credits it with calming the beans. (page 36) 5. A PINCH of comino, and the onion and garlic go in WHOLE. 6. Optional: 1/4 tsp baking soda per cup of dry beans in the soak. Never more, rinse well. ⭐ THE REAL SECRET Watch at 7:56. It is free, and it is the one my mother's whole house lived by. ⭐ MY POT (frijoles de la olla, page 92) 1 lb dry pinto or black beans · water 2 to 3 inches over · 1/2 white onion in one piece · 3 whole garlic cloves · 1 tbsp manteca or oil · 1 tbsp salt from the start · epazote in the last 30 minutes. Simmer 1 to 2 hours soaked. THE HONEST WORDS: • Still bothered you → check the middles, all five creamy? Then make the portion smaller and keep going. • Hard night → té de manzanilla or hierbabuena. Comfort, not medicine. WHO PROFITS: one small box from the gas aisle costs more than five bags of dried beans. Some of those pills really help, and there is no shame in them. But the cheapest cure is cloudy water poured down the drain. THE HABIT: soak Saturday night, pour off Sunday morning, one slow pot, a small bowl every day. And when the bean pot boils over onto the stove? That is the other half of my life: 🧼 Clean The Mexican Way → [link to cleaning channel] If beans were always hard on you, it was never because something was wrong with you. Nobody ever showed you. Tell me in the comments: did your mother put epazote in the pot, or did she have her own secret? I read every one.