What to do With Bean Juice

Uhm, water your plants?

It's gonna be high in oligosaccharrides--the, uhm, indigestible gas producing starches of beans. If I'm making soup from the beans, I'll use some of it in the soup. Otherwise I pour it out. If there's no salt in the water from pork products or added fat then it would be fine to water plants or pour into your compost pile.

phil

My grandmother used to wash rice. I used to say don't need to wash it we're modern now, but she still did. Heck I still rinse chicken.

Anyway she watered the plants with that milky white water. Didn't seem to make a difference to me. :)

shel if I understand correctly this is cooking liquid as in "bean liquor" right? Not soaking liquid? Cuz if it's bean liquor then I would use it to cook other things that would be complemented by the flavor of the broth. Things I would be tempted to use it for would be as soup bases, poaching liquid for pork or beef or even chicken. I would use it for a liquid to cook things in like rice or even risotto or cous cous. That sort of thing.

Use it as the cooking liquid for rice. The liquid from regular black beans is used with rice to make arroz negro.

Bean juice, aside from green beans, is what mostly causes the unpleasant side effects of dried beans (should I elaborate?). Yeah, water the garden with it.

Oregon I eat borracho beans all the time without any gas problems...that's essentially pinto bean "soup" with bean liquor from the cooking. But that is massively different from the water used to SOAK the beans in, pre-cooking. That pre-cook, soaking water, I pour off the beans at least twice prior to refilling with new water and cooking the beans.

Okay, I stand corrected. By the way, I cook a lot with beans. I think they are one of "the next big things", but even if they're not, definitely one of my favorites.

A little digestion and nutrition insight:

Yes the bean liquor will contain inulin (and oligosaccharide) that is indigestible in the human digestive tract but not the microflora (bacteria in our digestive system).

Inulin feeds the bacteria in the last part of the intestine (right before the colon). If you get excessive gas by eating beans (and or the liquor), It's a sign that your microflora lacks in these beneficial bacteria. The more you consume oligosaccharides, the less you will produce gas which means your microflora is healthier. This is the meaning of <prebiotic>.

Just a little nutrition lesson.

So eat beans and toot away until you toot no more! (grin)

Luc

Hi Shel,

I am mostly French Canadian.... I knew there was a song about that.... but I couldn't come up with it...

Luc

When I visit my mom, I always ask for her bean curry with basmati rice. Love those beans. And I lived in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas, endless view of India's prime basmati growing region.

@phatch - Oligosaccharides are not starches but rather small sugars, and most people can digest them into monosaccharides, which can be absorbed in the small intestine (with lactose being a major example of an oligosaccharide that many people cannot digest). Starches are large molecules composed of monosaccharides in branching chains; this type of complex sugar is known as a polysaccharide. Starches are produced by plants as a source of stored energy for the plant. People can break down starches via amylase (which is a digestive enzyme most notably produced in salivary glands and in the pancreas) and then utilized as energy. The part of the bean we digest and absorb is virtually all starch. Another example of a starch rich food is a potato.

 

What you're referring to is cellulose, which like starches are polysaccharides made of individual sugars; cellulose is used as structural support by plants. The difference between cellulose and starches is the type of chemical bonds that join the individual sugars. The animal enzyme, known as amylase, is able to break the starch bonds, but not the cellulose bonds. Cows and termites are the notable examples of animals that can use cellulose for energy. Interestingly they don't possess the enzymes to metabolize cellulose. However, they are able to utilize their host bacteria to help them harvest the sugars in the cellulose. The cellulose in beans is the seed coat. The gas (methane and hydrogen) that is created by the breakdown of cellulose (along with undigested simple sugars and starches that make their way undigested into the colon) are what produce flatulence.

Hello qed5,

Some insightful corrections to your explanation: Some people cannot digest lactose because they lost the ability to manufacture lactase (a digestive enzyme) after childhood (like all mammals do except humans).

Humans never have the enzymes to digest non-glucose polymer chains like oligosaccharides which are often composed of other saccharides like fructose, galactose, etc..  Oligosaccharides are digested by gut microflora only and flatulence occurs or not depending on which type of bacteria digests the oligosaccharides.

Lactase deficient individuals have flatulence because gut bacteria digest the lactose for them (not the enzyme).

 

Humans, any animal, lack the enzymes to digest cellulose.  Cows and termites can digest cellulose because of their gut microflora.  They emit methane.  Humans emit mostly air, hydrogen and little methane that has nothing to do with cellulose digestion.

 

I grant you that, as a mix disaccharide, lactose could be considered an oligosaccharide.  Oligo meaning small chain.  But it does not because an oligosaccharide is composed of at least 2 non-glucose saccarides linked together in the chain which renders it indigestable by human enzymes. If lactose (glucose+galactose) was and oligosaccharide sucrose (table sugar Glucose+fructose) would be as well.

 

Luc H.

Sorry? do you really mean arroz negro? like spanish paella but black? the colour black in the arroz negro is make by the natural ink of the "sepia" or calamar

man.. throw it away, it may contain toxins, depending on the way you did it. Last week I saw J. Oliver throwing it away, but he said that this could be welcome in some dishes... i don`t know

 

It's full of unwanted starch, I'd throw it away.

 

Ken Harper

http://www.chopchop.ca

If it's sat out for more then a couple hours total, it needs to go! You'll be more then tooting!

All you tooters, a little epazote goes a long way. 

A lot of people like to have rosemary, basil,around the yard. zote is just as important. It grows like a weed, um, it is one I think.

@Panini- I had no idea... good to know!