beans, beans the magical fruit--bottling beans

I've been on a BIY (Bottle It Yourself) binge today. But since I made bread today too, I guess maybe it should be MIY?  I dunno.  I just know that today I had the energy to make bread, bottle jelly and jam and bottle dry beans.  It all started with not having jam or jelly, but having all the ingredients to make it and having this renewed desire to be more self sufficient and self reliant.

Just never mind the fact that the Elderberry jelly didn't set up.  

I'll fix that later alligator.  Until then, we have delicious elderberry syrup.

Then at about mid morning I thought Cowboy Caviar sounded good so I'd just put some black beans on to soak.  Since I have 43,000 bags of dry beans I thought to myself, "self, you should really just bottle some of these beans."

So I did.

The process is really quite simple.

It's as easy as 1,2,3...


...4,5,6,7.

1. Sanitize bottles.  (Do ten other things while dishwasher is sanitizing.)
2. Sort and rinse beans.
3. Put beans in bottles.  (1/2 cup/ pint jars; 1 cup/quart jars.)
4. Pour boiling water in bottles leaving 1" head space.
5. Add salt.  (1/2 teaspoon/pint; 1 teaspoon/quart)
6. Place new lids that have been boiled and rings on bottles.
7. Pressure cook beans.

.

Now I searched on Pinterest for how to info, but thought I'd better consult the manufactures instructions for my brand of Pressure Cooker and it said to cook them at 11 lbs of pressure for 75 minutes for pints and 90 minutes for quarts.

Don't forget to add vinegar to the water inside the pressure cooker if you have hard water.  If you forget, you'll have a hard water nightmare.

I forgot to add the vinegar.  Oops.  

 I used quarts because there are seven of us in this family and at any given bean meal we'd use at least four cans of store bought beans.  One quart equals about two cans.

 Now we have beans that are ready to use,  cost pennies, are wholesome and homemade, and you know how the saying goes...eat more beans at every meal.