We took a closer look at cooking beans in a pressure cooker. Instead of a pre-soak (yes lot's of literature recommends this even when using a pressure cooker) on the beans we opted on a twice cook, utilizing the pressure cooker both times. Our theory was to use the pressure to expedite the hydration of the beans and the twice cooking to remove any beany scum and intense, slightly off flavor, we could generate in a single pressure cooking. We put navy beans into our pressure cooker, covered them with water and cooked them for five minutes on low pressure. Once they were cooked, we strained them and put our beef, tomato, seasonings and the beans back into the pressure cooker. We cooked the beans a second time for 25 minutes. The result was the tastiest, tenderest and richest beans we have prepared. We did not need to sit in front of the stove, monitoring the flame and adding water. We did not need to season the beans heavily at the end. What we did have to do is enjoy the tastiest beans we have prepared pressure cooker or otherwise.
