STOP Buying CANNED PUMPKIN! — Try These 45 Appalachian Fall Recipes & Pumpkin Tricks

🔗 Grandma never wrote hers down, so I finally did. All 118 plus much more. Get em before they're gone: https://www.opalrowe.com Opal Rowe lays out forty-five old Appalachian Mountains ways to soak and cook a pot of dry beans so they come up creamy and whole instead of split, gritty, or hard in the middle — the plain mountain way the recipe cards and test kitchens spent a hundred years catching up to. From the one-hour hot soak that ends the overnight fret to the float test she'd put in your hand first, she counts all the way down to the one thing dissolved in that bowl on her counter she's never named in 60 years — poured out at last. In this one, Opal covers: • The one-hour hot soak that does the whole job of an overnight one • Why you always pour the soak water off — and never cook a bean in it • The old grandma tests: the float, the pinch, the wrinkle, the spoon-blow • A pinch of soda, a bay leaf, a pat of butter — what goes in the soak and what goes in the pot • The secret she's kept for 60 years — what's really dissolved in that soak water, named at last Opal wants to know where you're watching from — and who taught you the old ways of soaking a crock of beans. Tell her down in the comments. CHAPTERS 0:00 The Bowl of Beans and Her 60-Year Secret 2:21 The Float Test, Given Early 3:08 The Hot Quick Soak — No Overnight Needed 4:00 Sort Them on a White Cloth 4:49 Pour Off All the Soak Water, Every Time 5:34 Start Them of a Morning, Not the Night Before 6:21 The Pinch Test at the Bin 7:13 A Pinch of Soda in the Soak, Not the Cook Water 8:09 The Acid Goes In Last 8:54 Store Them in Cloth or Glass, Never Sealed Plastic 9:47 A Bay Leaf in the Soak, Not Just the Pot 10:37 Give the Soak Water to the Garden 11:21 Soak Them Down in the Cool 12:09 Soak in a Stoneware Crock 13:08 Use a Pot Twice Too Big 13:55 Change the Soak Water Once or Twice 14:45 Only Ever Add Hot Water Mid-Cook 15:28 Read the Wrinkle 16:18 Soak Each Kind by Itself 17:09 Cook Them in Cast Iron 18:01 Black-Eyed Peas and Lentils Need No Soak 18:56 Why a Raw Kidney Bean Will Make You Sick 19:47 Test One Between Your Fingers 20:43 Read the Broth, Not Just the Bean 21:32 Pour Off the First Cook Water Too 22:33 Rinse Cool After the Hot Soak 23:23 A Pat of Butter in the Cook Water 24:15 Mind the First Gray Foam 25:18 Get the Water Ratio Right 26:12 A Long Soak Goes in the Icebox 27:24 Freeze Them to Skip the Soak 28:27 The Spoon Blow Test 29:20 Seed Beans Go in a Paper Poke, Never a Jar 30:15 Save Seed Off the Best Vines 31:16 Up High, Beans Cook Longer 32:20 The Pressure Canner Cooks Them From Dry 33:28 A Sprig of the Bean Herb 34:28 The Fingernail Snap at the Bin 35:30 A Pot of Beans Was a Word to the Whole Holler 36:29 More Soak Time Is Not Always Better 37:24 The Lye-Water Wonder — Keep It as History 38:25 A Softer Pot for the Sick and the Old 39:23 What the Soak Is Really For 40:26 A Bag of Beans Is an Inheritance 41:36 The Secret Revealed: Salt in the Soak 42:44 The One That Isn't a Trick at All