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305: 7 Surprising Benefits of Dried Beans You Won't Find in Canned

β€’ Jarrod Roussel β€’ Episode 305

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Want to save up to 50% on your grocery bills and unlock a world of delicious, whole food plant-based meals? Discover the secret to transforming your health and wallet with the ultimate plant-based superfood: dried beans!

In this game-changing episode of Power on Plants, we're spilling the beans (pun intended!) on the incredible benefits of cooking with dried beans. From slashing your grocery bills to preventing and even reversing disease, we'll dive into the top 7 reasons why dried beans reign supreme over their canned counterparts.

One of the biggest advantages of dried beans is their affordability. By buying in bulk and cooking from scratch, you can save a significant amount of money on your grocery bills and reduce your food budget. Plus, dried beans have a long shelf life, making them a great addition to your emergency food supply or pantry staples.

But the benefits of dried beans don't stop there. They're also a nutrition powerhouse packed with protein, fiber, and essential vitamins and minerals. Whether you're a vegan, vegetarian, or flexitarian, dried beans are a great way to add variety and optimal nutrition to your plant-based diet.

In this episode, we'll also share about some of our favorite simple and mouth-watering legume recipes. And we'll also discuss how to cook dried beans with ease using time-saving tools that will make your whole food plant-based meal prep so much easier!

By the end of this episode, you'll be equipped with the inspiration to start cooking with dried beans and transforming your health and wallet. So what are you waiting for? Tune in now and start unlocking the power of dried beans for yourself!

🎁 Not yet a member of our FREE plant-based community? Once you're on the inside, every single podcast episode becomes searchable for you. 😲 Join us to gain the plant-based encouragement, real health-changing ideas, and sustainable plant-based inspiration you've been hoping for! πŸ’•

πŸ₯£ Grab our Cookbook Bundles today to learn the simple way to make whole food plant-based eating quick, enjoyable, and sustainable.

πŸ€” Wondering what's in our Thrive Cookbook? Click here for the inside scoop!

Speaker 1:

dried beans or canned beans. Which should you choose? Today, we're sharing seven reasons. We choose dried beans over canned. You're not going to want to miss this one.

Speaker 1:

Hey sister, welcome to the Power on Plants podcast. Are you tired of staring into the fridge wondering what to eat so you can just feel better? Do you want to avoid spending hours in the kitchen making complicated meals in the name of health? Would you love to leave fatigue behind and finally have the energy to do all the things you want to do?

Speaker 1:

Hi, we're Jared and Anita Roussel, christ followers, health care professionals, parents of four and big fans of great tasting food. We, too, tried exercising more, eating natural and clean foods, but we still found ourselves struggling with what we thought were changes that come with age or bad genes, and we weren't finding answers the traditional route. So we dug into the research and created our secret nutritional weapon sustainable plant-based living. The truth is, you can eat more whole plant foods and it's not hard. You just need the way. That's realistic and delicious so you never feel deprived. If you're ready to enjoy your meals, no longer be held back by your health struggles and actively live your life, then you're in the right place. So grab your favorite plant-based cup of happy pop in those earbuds and let's get started. Well, hey there, sunshine, we're so glad you're joining us for this episode of Power on Plants.

Speaker 1:

We love talking all things whole food, plant-based especially how to make living whole food, plant-based quick, simple and delicious, so that it's sustainable. You can feel better naturally and do all those things that you just dream about doing before because you just don't feel like it Now. I lived that way so many years ago and I know how it feels. If you find yourself in that place where you're dealing with multiple health issues, you can't get rid of the extra pounds. You feel like you have to diet to do that or eat in some miserable way. It's just not true.

Speaker 1:

So today, jared and I are going to share with you about one of our five power foods that we absolutely love legumes. Now that is going to be your peas, your lentils and beans. So when I talk about it today, I won't be saying legumes over and over again. I'm going to say probably beans, but know that I'm referring to all of these things. So let's get into the seven reasons why dried beans are such a good choice. Reason number one I have seven things planned, but Jared doesn't know what they are, so I'm going to see if he can guess one of the things on the list. Let's just play a little game we like to keep it fun and mix it up around here.

Speaker 2:

What is one reason I always feel like this comes at my expense? Because it does.

Speaker 1:

It makes it fun for everyone else, so all right, let's get into it. It does, so. What is a one main reason that you choose dried beans over canned?

Speaker 1:

I think it can be less expensive oh, that's a good reason and it is on my list. You you know that was number and I didn't put them in any specific order, but that was one of the things on the list. Let me see what number I had. That number five. Dried beans are easier on the budget. They're the most cost effective options. They're inexpensive and even cost less because you can buy them in bulk too. So if you buy them in bulk and you can store them, it is just awesome how much money you can save in bulk too. So if you buy them in bulk and you can store them, it is just awesome how much money you can save.

Speaker 2:

Such a great reason. What makes you think of that? That's just one of the reasons we've considered in the past when buying the dried beans. We like to try to get organic when we can. We find that the dry tends to be less expensive. They're also less weight, so you can store more in a smaller area yes and another reason dry over canned is that they do have a very long shelf life too.

Speaker 2:

Yes, I know, canned can canned can but just when they're dry and you can keep them sealed nicely, they'll last months even longer oh yeah, longer than months.

Speaker 1:

you can keep dried beans for a very long time. It's amazing I found them in the back of the pantry at some point along our moving history and gone. Oh, we need to cook these. These have been back here for a while and I've never had any that didn't turn out good when we cook them. So cooking them can save you a lot of money, but it also is a great pantry staple to have on hand that you can make in a matter of no time at all when you know how and we're going to get into that a little bit Now.

Speaker 2:

is that one on the list?

Speaker 1:

I had them both together. Can you believe that? Oh?

Speaker 2:

okay. Well, I just had a momentary vision here where when you first said that's number five on the list, I felt like I was on Family Feud, but instead of Family Feud it's family food.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to family food.

Speaker 2:

That was not on the list. Big red X.

Speaker 1:

I love it. Okay, now let's go to number one. We're going back up to number one. When you choose dried over canned, you can limit the number of additives. Yes, and this just doesn't apply to beans, right? This applies to anything that you can buy and cook it yourself over cans. You're going to get less additives.

Speaker 2:

And I had thought that I didn't say it first. But I had thought that, because when you add whatever you add to it, you know what's going in it, right? So there's not excessive salt, there are no preservatives, no flavor, quote, unquote, and I'm doing the air quotes enhancers. It's just the bean and whatever else you add to spice it up.

Speaker 1:

Great points, and I also thought about the fact that if they're sitting in the metal or plastic cans for a long time, certain things can leach into that liquid that is not going to be in your homemade dried beans. Now it may seem intimidating if you've never made them before, but it is one of the easiest things to make and once you learn how, it is going to be such a big game changer for you in so many ways. Number two why do we choose dried beans over canned? You can control the flavors and you can get more flavor. Now we're all about bold flavors because when you can get things to taste really, really good, you're never going to feel like you are deprived. Think about how many diets you've tried, how many different ways you've tried to get healthy or lose weight or reverse disease, and over time, you might stick with something for a while, but when you get to a place where you're down the road and maybe you've gotten some results, you go back to your old way of living, and I feel like the majority of the time that happens, it's because you don't have the flavors that you love. You're missing those flavors. The food doesn't taste good, so we want it to taste amazing. So when you make the dried beans, you can tailor to your taste preferences what you're making. Also, think about this like I'll just use garbanzos or chickpeas, for example, which are the same thing, same bean, different name.

Speaker 1:

Now let's say you're making something like brownie batter hummus, so good, chocolatey, delicious dessert dip. That will just blow your mind. That's in our original cookbook and I'm going to tell you about a couple of other recipes here that you're not going to want to miss out on. One's in our thrive cookbook the cookie dough dip. Okay, so both of those you're not going to want to miss out on, and they're made with beans. You can make them with these chickpeas. If I know that I'm going to make either one of these two recipes with those beans, I can plan ahead of time so that doesn't have any funky flavors in them that will clash with that dip, like I'm not going to want to cook my beans with onions and savory seasonings and garlic and things like that. If I know I'm putting them in the brownie batter hummus or the cookie dough dip. That might be a little weird.

Speaker 2:

So for this funky is relative, because we don't think garlic and onion are funky tasting, but it might be in a cookie dough dip. It would be bad, that would not be good.

Speaker 1:

It would be so bad. That's a great point, jared. So hearty hummus dip is also in our original cookbook. So now you have three great recipes that you need to try from our original and our Thrive cookbook. And if you think, where do I get those, you can get those at poweronplantscom forward slash cookbook. But I want you to understand just this example. The reason I'm sharing this is you can adjust how you make your beans if you're making them yourself. So not only are you able to leave out ingredients that are not good for you, you can leave out ingredients that won't taste good in the recipes you're going to use them in, because a lot of times if you buy beans, they might have like a veggie stock in them or a beef broth, or they have the things like you talked about that you don't want, like salt or oil. But here we're talking about flavor.

Speaker 2:

I was just thinking salt, because salt might not be good in some of these dessert type dishes that you make with them. So with these you can cook it without salt, or and I'm going to show you all how to do these things and save so much- time inside our upcoming course, power on Plants Academy.

Speaker 1:

This program is going to change everything for you, but I want you to start getting these results now, before you come in. You can start learning some of these things. That's why it lights us up to be here sharing them with you, because we don't want you to wait till the course comes out or wait till I go step by step through these things with you, because there's some things that I can explain to you on the podcast and there's some things that you just need to see me do in the kitchen, right, so we can tell you the things here. Like this, where you can say oh, you know what, if I did buy the canned beans, they probably would have some flavorings or seasonings in there and it would adjust the flavor profile of what I'm making. And that's going to be a big deal if I want it to taste good, because I don't want oniony veggie tasting brownie batter, hummus or cookie dough dip. That would be weird. But again, if I was making them for a hearty hummus dip, I might put some savory veggies in with it so that my broth tastes good, so it doesn't just taste like beans. But now we've got some onions and some garlic and some deliciousness.

Speaker 1:

With all these different ways you can season them up and now I can use that to go in my hummus dip, or I can eat a big bowl of beans, or I can take those beans and drain them off. They'd still have a good flavor cooked into them, because that liquid which, when you buy them canned, they're going to be cooking it a lot of times in a plain liquid and then adding these things in that you don't want in there. We're cooking them and when they go from dried to rehydrated, they're rehydrating with that flavorful liquid, with all those things we put in there. So now we have this food that normally wouldn't taste great if you just opened up a can of beans. But wow, I cannot believe beans taste this good. That is what you're going to come away with when you start cooking dried beans and you learn how to season those puppies up. When you learn how to season those puppies up, you are going to be set, so this allows you to control the flavor.

Speaker 1:

Reason three that we like dried beans is you can choose your preferred level of firmness. A lot of times when you get them they're really mushy. But then there are other brands you buy and you just think they're too hard, they didn't cook them long enough. You get to decide when you cook your own beans. Number four this one's hard for me to talk about. It really is, but there are things you need to know that you're just not hearing anywhere else. Okay, so in canned foods, yeah, I'm going there.

Speaker 2:

I know where you're headed with this. We're not afraid to talk about this stuff. We don't shy away from the hard subjects.

Speaker 1:

No, okay, so this is the truth of the matter. Things that are canned are canned in factories, and factories have bugs and they have rodents.

Speaker 2:

Critters. Critters is a great way to put it okay.

Speaker 1:

So there are guidelines that are set up that those foods that you buy that are canned or jarred can only have a certain number of rodent hairs or critter poop allowed in them. That's as far as I'm going. I'm not going any farther into this. I just want you to understand anytime you can cook fresh. Am I telling you don't ever eat canned? No, I'm not, because sometimes it's incredibly convenient. But what I'm telling you is just be aware that you may be getting more in there than what you bargained for, and this may be one of the reasons it tastes a little better when you cook it. I don't know, I'm just throwing that out there.

Speaker 2:

You have the ability, when the beans are dry, to wash them off, give them a little rinse, maybe even inspect them, because you can visually see them as they're dry.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that's the other thing. I wasn't going to go into that either. But if you pre-soak the beans, it really is not a bad idea. It's not required for nutrition, it's just not. But if you pre-soak them, if there are any bugs, because bugs can bore into beans we have bought large bags of bulk beans before and you can look at them and they don't look like they have any critters in them. But when you soak them, you find out whether or not there are critters in there, because they'll come out.

Speaker 2:

Give it about what 15 minutes in the water to soak.

Speaker 1:

I'd say 20 or 25. You should be able to see. If there are critters, they'll come out, and so you'll see them floating on top of the water. So it is a good thing to soak your beans and to cook your own beans. This reason alone is enough for me to not really want to buy them, although we do buy them from time to time.

Speaker 2:

That's why I'm not telling you, don't? We have kept a few cans on hand for emergencies. We come in from a long day and we want to make something fairly quickly. Then we'll open up the cans.

Speaker 1:

But beans can be so fast to make we're going to go into that in a minute, so really, time shouldn't be an issue, with just a little bit of forethought. All right, so we're now. I'm gonna be done with number four. That's it. I'm glad we didn't make that one number two, that would have been so gross. Okay, moving on. Number five Jared's talked about it. Dried beans are easier on the budget and I'm going over it again just because we're here and the shelf life is better, the foods last longer. Reason number six it's fast and easy. That's where we were fast and easy, quick to make them this way. Okay, so don't think it's going to take you forever.

Speaker 1:

When I grew up, we used to make beans on the stovetop. There's so many other ways that you can enjoy beans. One of my favorite is the Instant Pot. Why? Because it is fast. So once you soak and make sure there's, I mean you could do that. You could get home, dump some beans into a pot of water, go, do something for 20, 30 minutes, come back and check it If they're good to go. Just give them a good rinse. You put them in your Instant Pot with your seasonings, fill it with water and really the hardest bean and the largest bean can be done in like an hour, 10 in an Instant Pot and that's a huge instant pot filled for our whole family. It's an eight quart. So if you're cooking smaller batches it may not even take that long. You can do a slow cooker all day if you leave in the morning. I mean, there's just so many ways. I'm not going to go into everything here, but what I want you to understand is this can be so fast and easy.

Speaker 2:

And if you don't have an instant pot, that really is a good investment, because it's one of those where, even if it takes about an hour, you set it, hit, go, you walk away and then, whenever it's done, at least hours beeps when it's done, so then we know we've not just been tending to it on the stovetop, making sure it doesn't boil dry, doesn't boil over With the Instant Pot. You really can just set it and forget it.

Speaker 1:

Exactly, it, exactly. And the seventh reason why we choose dried beans over canned is it is such an easy way to get your greens. Such an easy way to get your greens we can talk about that more inside Podcast Insiders Experience and I can tell you all about how to do that. It is so simple. When you learn how to get greens into your beans in a way that you don't really notice, you can bump up the nutritional value even more. It will blow your mind.

Speaker 2:

Powerhouse.

Speaker 1:

It's a game changer. So here we have seven of the reasons. Are these all of the reasons? Absolutely not. I could keep going on and on, but I want to stop here. I don't want to overwhelm you. What, jared, and I want you to take away from this is these seven reasons and think, is there one that's just important enough to me to keep me from only eating canned beans, to make me want to try cooking my own at home, if you've never tried it before? Because once you taste the flavors, once you realize that you can limit those additives, once you limit the other stuff that's in there that you don't want in there, and understand that it's, what are we going to say?

Speaker 2:

We'll call them impurities.

Speaker 1:

Limit the impurities. I love that. And when you realize how much easier they are on the budget, how simple they are to store, and when you see how fast and easy it is, and add to all those things the fact that getting more greens is super simple when you make your own beans, you are going to be amazed and fall in love with this powerhouse food. This is why it's one of the top foods that we recommend you eat If you want to get healthy. There's so many reasons for that. If you think what are the reasons, all you need to do is come into our free group. Podcast Insiders. Experience y'all. I know you hear it all the time. I cannot quit talking about this group because if there was no other reason but the fact that you can come in there and search over 300 podcast episodes, it will change your life. Get in there and search beans or greens. You will not believe the ideas you'll get, even if you listen to every single episode. You know, one of our clients told me and she's become a dear friend, I mean just absolutely precious. She was telling me the other day. She said you know what? I listen to the podcast episodes, and even if I'm listening to one that I've heard before. I get new ideas. Well, this is the same thing. It's like you can't possibly remember everything and try everything because you remember by doing so. If you just take away the one thing and do it, you can go back another time and listen and take away another thing. But this is a way to listen again without having to go back and listen to every single episode in entirety. You can search just what you need right there inside Pi.

Speaker 1:

Our free community is filled with awesome people. You're going to meet some incredible people that are going to encourage you on your journey. There are just so many reasons you should be there and be active. Get in there just a few minutes a week and just be active, sharing what you've cooked, sharing your questions. It's a great place to find that support amongst other believers who are on this journey to eating whole plant foods, to feel their best so that they can live the full, amazing life that God has planned for them to enjoy and for you to enjoy.

Speaker 1:

You can join us there by going to poweronplantscom forward slash P-I-E. That's poweronplantscom forward slash pie. We will see you there, sunshine. We are so excited to be part of your plant-based journey. We are honored. We are praying for you. You are going to feel better. It doesn't matter what anybody says to you. It is going to get better. Things are looking up. Just take one thing from this episode put it into practice today and watch how the plant-based joy will start flooding into your life. Welcome to Power on Plants. We can't wait to get to know you more and we will see you next time on the next episode.

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