My usual method of preparing garbanzo beans (aka Chickpeas) is to re-hydrate them overnight in a bowl of water, and then cook the crud out of them the next day for hours on end…but this morning I was putting away my rice cooker/veggie steamer (I like to let it air-dry overnight after washing it) when I had a brain wave… (or a brain fart if it turned out badly)…I thought… why not cook the garbanzos in the steamer?!
Seemed logical enough to me.
This way, you don’t have to baby-sit the pot with stirring and have your stove running for over an hour (I have a gas stove and do not like to leave burners on and leave the room) while repeatedly filling up the pot with boiling water from the kettle.
So what did I have to lose? Other than a batch of beans? So experimentation was in order…
I filled up the reservoir to the brim and set the timer for 75 minutes (max time on my Black & Decker model), after 45 minutes, I checked them, nope, not done yet so I topped up the water and let it run the full 75 minutes. ‘Ding!’! …. I went down to the kitchen to check again, nope, still not done, so topped up water again and let run for another 30 minutes….
‘Ding!’…. went down… and. they. were. DONE. PERFECTLY!
NO watched pot on the stove, NO Stirring necessary, NO boil-overs, NO adding boiling water to a pot as it evaporates, and NO scummy pot to wash afterwards.
What a BONUS.
Oh…and the ‘shells’ of the garbanzos stay intact and adhered to the bean…nothing more frustrating than trying to get empty shells out of a pot full of cooked beans!
I imagine this will work for just about any dried and re-hydrated bean, so I will be testing this out on Black Beans and Pinto Beans very soon.