Why Do Legumes Need Soaking? [Disadvantages]

Many people use legumes such as beans and lentils as a low-cost, shelf-stable source of nourishment.

Nevertheless, knowing how to make these meals from scratch may be difficult, and certain varieties of legumes need some prior preparation in the form of soaking.

Why is it necessary to soak beans before cooking?

The primary reason why soaking is required for cooking dry beans is that it rehydrates the beans, enabling them to cook faster and more evenly.

This will ensure that the finished product has the best texture possible, with fewer split-open and burst beans and an overall softer and smoother texture.

It also decreases cooking time, which may be up to 75% depending on the variety of bean.

In this Taste of Home article, food scientist Harold McGhee recommends soaking your beans in salted water at a rate of 2 tablespoons per quart of water.

The salt will displace the calcium and magnesium in the bean’s cell walls, softening the outer skins and allowing for more uniform cooking.

There is additional reason to assume that soaking beans before to cooking would be advantageous in terms of nutrients and digestion.

This is a significant factor since many individuals consume beans for the nourishment they give, yet beans are notoriously difficult to digest.

Beans include antinutrients such as phytic acid, which inhibits several digestive enzyme functions in the body.

For example, phytic acid seems to interfere with the function of enzymes such as pepsin (engaged in protein digestion) and amylase (involved in the digestion of starch).

Since it binds to minerals like iron and zinc, phytic acid also interferes with nutritional absorption in beans.

Nevertheless, functional medicine practitioner Chris Kresser claims that soaking beans for 18 hours at room temperature or 3 hours at 140 degrees Fahrenheit removes between 30 and 70% of the phytic acid contained.

With the caveat that soaking beans might possibly destroy the water-soluble vitamins found in the beans (there’s always a trade-off! ), this could help both digestion and nutritional absorption.

The number of lectins in beans varies based on the variety of bean.

There has been some study that demonstrates lectins have a variety of detrimental consequences in animals, including poor growth and development, intestinal lining damage, interference with pancreatic function, and skeletal muscle injury.

Nevertheless, Kresser emphasizes that correctly cooking beans might help to mitigate the effects of lectin.

When it comes to lectins, it seems that just boiling beans before consuming them, even without soaking, practically entirely deactivates the lectins.

Third, beans are rich in FODMAPs, a kind of carbohydrate that produces gas, bloating, and other unpleasant digestive symptoms in many individuals.

Soaking beans before cooking removes at least part of the gas-producing FODMAPs from the beans and into the water, perhaps alleviating some of the unfavorable digestive effects.

From a culinary standpoint, skipping the soaking stage may be troublesome.

Beans with thicker skins, such as black beans or kidney beans, need soaking to ensure consistent cooking.

If your beans have thinner skins, you may omit the soaking stage or shorten the soaking period without affecting the texture of the cooked beans.

If you do not soak your beans before cooking them, it may be hazardous to your nutrition and digestion.

Soaking beans, as previously stated, neutralizes some of the potentially toxic components in beans, such as phytic acid, lectins, and FODMAPs.

If you miss the soaking stage, your body’s absorption of the various nutrients available in the meal, including not just the beans, but also whatever nutrition is present in the other components of the meal, particularly the minerals, may be compromised.

You may also have greater gas or bloating after the meal.

The crucial factor to remember while considering a substance’s toxicity is the expression “the dosage makes the poison.”

This indicates that a drug with hazardous qualities may cause damage only at high enough concentrations. Even water may be hazardous if ingested in large quantities.

The potentially harmful or hazardous ingredient to be cautious about in beans is a form of lectin known as phytohaemagglutinin (PHA).

This lectin is especially abundant in kidney beans, which is why eating undercooked kidney beans is likely to result in food poisoning.

Cooking kidney beans for as little as 15 minutes (or half that time in a pressure cooker) nearly entirely deactivates PHA, eliminating the danger of food illness.

The caveat is that slow cooking beans do not reach high enough temperatures to destroy lectins, which is why there have been reports of food illness from eating beans cooked in crockpots.

This is also true for unsoaked beans.

While attempting to prevent food poisoning, thoroughly cooking your beans at a high enough temperature (by boiling or pressure cooking) should be your first priority.

The conclusion here is that your basic strategy to preparing beans should be to fully prepare them, either by boiling or pressure cooking.

If you are short on time, you may omit the soaking process and should not get food poisoning (soaking is still beneficial if you have time see the section above).

In 1988, a hospital decided to hold a so-called healthy eating day.

On one unfortunate day, the crew was served a dinner that included undercooked kidney beans.

After that, some persons had severe vomiting and diarrhea that lasted for almost a day.

Following that, no infections were found in the meal, but it was determined that the undercooked bean dish had unusually high levels of phytohaemagglutinin (PHA).

Food poisoning has also happened as a result of eating beans cooked in slow cookers.

Slow cookers do not seem to achieve high enough cooking temperatures to neutralize possibly harmful lectins in the beans.

If you use this procedure, be careful to spit out the bean if it seems to be undercooked or excessively hard.

A single undercooked bean is unlikely to cause food illness, but it’s best to be cautious than sorry.