black beans and rice - comments or other suggestions ?

[rockriver]

we've been trying to learn about putting up dried goods in cans.
i've noticed a lot of folks put up rice and many different beans, especially black beans.
--
a relative is a nutrition manager at a large hospital. she gives black beans a good endorsement for
a source of protein.
--
another source has spent some time in brazil. black beans and rice are staples.
a big redheaded stocky northerner spent several years in brazil. black beans and rice was his
main diet. he came back to the u.s. after several years. chest was smaller. shoulders were smaller.
BUT, he ate cheaply, and he was probably healthier!
so,
the bride and i are considering putting back a few storage cans.
comments?

or suggestions of other high food value items that will store well in number 10's ??

[Rmplstlskn]

Married to a latin honey, you bet we keep black beans and rice... And pink beans, and kidney...
We like Jasmine rice...

Rmpl

[BigJohn]

For storage, you are really looking at only a few valid grains that store well. Rice stores reasonably well if it is WHITE rice. Brown rice goes rancid very fast. White rice is not a complete grain, so it lacks nutrition.

The only ones I think are worth consideration are white rice, wheat and corn. (and a few oddball grains, like oats and rye and barley in moderation).

I am very partial to wheat for storage. Hard red winter wheat. But, you have to have a good plan for how to use it. It's actually much better nutritionally than rice and is much more versatile in menus. Cooked wheat berries or cracked wheat are similar to brown rice in many ways and can be used in the same recipes. In addition, there are about a zillion bread and pasta recipes you can make...if you like them. I suggest trying your family on some now and if they like it, you are golden. It keeps forever. It's cheap as dirt (right now), and someday you might really like a break from beans and rice. My wife and I eat a LOT of wheat right now. It probably makes up about 20% of our diet. A good wheat or "storage" cook book is a must-have. After you grind your own wheat and get used to eating the resulting breads and pastas, you will never go back to buying flour again. There really is a big difference in flavor.

I store a lot of legumes, like pintos, black beans, blackeyed peas, lentils etc. All of them seem to go well with rice, but all of them grow tiresome pretty fast for me. I plan to sprout a lot of them just for variety. I love lentils because they cook fast, sprout well and are easy to grind into flour. Soybeans are supposed to be a great storage food, but I think they are putrid, so I don't mess with them. All beans get hard as a brick after a few years of storage and won't soften much when you cook them. They are still fine to use ground into meal or flour, but you can forget about using 10 year old beans as "beans". Even after hours of cooking, they are tough and chewy.

Corn is another good storage grain, but won't last as long. I have seen figures of 5 years and 8 years, but I think it can last twice that if it's stored in an oxygen free environment. I am experimenting with that now. I just ground some popcorn I have had for about 4 years (exposed to air the whole time) and it was still great. Fortunately, it's pretty cheap, so if it starts to taste funny after a few years you can rotate it more often if you want. Living on an all-corn diet is not so easy because the niacin in it is bound up and unavailable for digestion. You can make it available by soaking your corn in an alkaline solution (wood ashes work for this). I don't think I will bother with this since I store a variety of grains and beans, most of them loaded with niacin. If I start seeing signs of pellagra, I will look into it then.

Forget the weird grains like quinoa, rye, barley and amaranth. They cost more and don't last long. I grow a little amaranth because it is a heavy producer, easier to grow in a garden than wheat, and it makes a pretty fair vegetable...but I don't store any except yearly for seed.

Oats don't store very well even if you store whole oats. Rolled oats go bad in a year or two. I store a little bit of oat meal in my pantry, but none long term.

White sugar is another item I store in bulk. It seems to last forever if you don't mind a slight color and flavor change (and clumping). It sure makes the rice easier to eat by giving you another way to prepare it. Sugar will also allow you to sneak in extra calories by sweetening drinks and foods with it.

If you do the math, you will see that an all grain diet is bulky. Most Americans have a "fast food gut" that probably can't handle that amount of bulk without a lengthy adjustment period. If you add oil, you can boost the calories without boosting the bulk. Sugar can work for that too.

I think it's wise to store a multivitamin. You can increase the shelf life of these (about double) by keeping them sealed in the refrigerator. Anyway, they are cheap insurance. I keep 3 years of multivitamins and 10 years of vitamin C crystals on hand. (The crystals never go bad and they are cheap. Lab grade vitamin C crystals last forever.)

Whatever you do, don't forget the salt. Grains are boring enough. Without salt and spices you may give up eating rather than face them. Bullion powder, peppercorns, chili powder, cocoa powder, garlic powder etc might be a lifesaver someday.

[crossbow]

exactly what BigJohn said, and add plenty of seasonings to the storage list, cinnamon, bouillon cubes,ect. I take the cubes out of the store package and store them in vaccumed sealed mason jars in a cool,dry,dark place. I store 1 cube for every pound of beans . I do have rolled oat and groats here that have been stored in mylar,oxy absorbers and pails that are over 5 yrs old that we use every day with no problems. all we put on them is honey,cinnamon, we do put a hand full of raisins or craisins in them while they cook.

[protus]

we like the tatse of black beans and store them. If we have our choice, we buy them over other "beans" when we pack our lts.

[crossbow]

I store almost every kind there are but favor the Great Norhtern and I think it's because my GF grew about fifty acres of our farm when i was a kid, the migrant workers would come every summer and pick them, MY GF would keep a few burlap bags of the dryed bean stalks, beans and all, then hang them up til the dryed real good and have me beat the bag with a stick for about a half hr, that would knock the beans out of the pods, then he'd pull out all the stalks, leaving the beans and chaft in the bag, on a real windy, he's dump the beans from one basket to another and the wind would blow out all the chaft,ect, leaving just the beans. then before cooking them, we'd sort them at the table taking out the bad beans.I hated all beans for about 40 yra.

[crossbow]

going back to the oat thing, if anyone stores oat groats and eats them whole, if you have a grain grinder, you could loosen the grinding wheels and run the oat groats thru the grinder once just breaking the groats in half, they'll cook faster, we cook them in an ele rice cooker in just minutes or the same time as rice.it'll make them creamer for a change.

[Patriotic Sheepdog]

I like the black beans as well and have several stored.

Question about corn though. Is triple clean corn from the feed store safe for human consumption? I have heard yes and no from diferent people I trust. Is popcorn better? I have hesitated on storing the "triple clean feed corn" because of the difference of opinion. I found a source that I can get 50# bags of triple clean corn for $9.00. Sounds like a cheap food source to supplement the storage plan if it is safe to eat.

Would love to hear from others than may have used it. Thanks...

(Sorry for thread drift. Mod if needed you can move this and start new thread).

[Kat]

I store almost every kind there are but favor the Great Norhtern and I think it's because my GF grew about fifty acres of our farm when i was a kid, the migrant workers would come every summer and pick them, MY GF would keep a few burlap bags of the dryed bean stalks, beans and all, then hang them up til the dryed real good and have me beat the bag with a stick for about a half hr, that would knock the beans out of the pods, then he'd pull out all the stalks, leaving the beans and chaft in the bag, on a real windy, he's dump the beans from one basket to another and the wind would blow out all the chaft,ect, leaving just the beans. then before cooking them, we'd sort them at the table taking out the bad beans.I hated all beans for about 40 yra.

We tried this method with wheat but used a fan for the wind and it worked pretty well.
We've stored quick oats in buckets with mylar liners and oxygen absorbers for years with no problem. They're actually one of the few grains we haven't had problems with at some point or another. I use them for breakfast, in bread and baked goods.
Back to the thread at hand :), as far as beans and rice go, we LOVE them. Together they make a complete protein which is why so many people store them whether they like them or not. Our favorite is black beans. We ate lentils for years because it was the bulk of our legume storage. They are good as well. To prepare them I put the amount I need in a pot and add and inch or so of hot water and cover them for the rest of the day until it's time to cook. This softens them enough so they are ready at about the same time as the rice. Sometimes we add in bacon bits to the rice for flavor. I just bought a 2.2 jar of Knorr tomato and chicken bouillon at Wal-Mart to season the rice. It gives it a nice flavor and makes older rice a little fluffier. As far as other things you can store in #10s for protein, I would recomment TVP. It comes in many different flavors, textures, etc... from Sloppy Joe, chicken, taco, BBQ, etc... I've also gotten freeze dried meats in #10s that have turned out well. Different cheeses are available too like Monterey Jack, Cheddar and Mozzarella. These are usually easier to find professionally packed. I fully agree with BigJohn about storing multivitamins. No matter what I store it may not be enough nutritionally after a while. Better safe than sorry.

[crossbow]

I like the black beans as well and have several stored.

Question about corn though. Is triple clean corn from the feed store safe for human consumption? I have heard yes and no from diferent people I trust. Is popcorn better? I have hesitated on storing the "triple clean feed corn" because of the difference of opinion. I found a source that I can get 50# bags of triple clean corn for $9.00. Sounds like a cheap food source to supplement the storage plan if it is safe to eat.

Would love to hear from others than may have used it. Thanks...

(Sorry for thread drift. Mod if needed you can move this and start new thread).

yes , if it's safe for animals, it's safe for you, my corn comes right out of the sheller at the farm. 9 bucks for 50 pounds triple cleaned is good, we get 10. per hundred out of the corn bin.

[Avenger2354]

Love black beans and rice. Another mix that I use is one can of black beans, one can of whole corn, mix in some lemon juice and fresh cilantro...Yeahhhh baby.

[Bearman202]

I buy an oat bran bread at Aldi's, and I love it. What is oat bran? Is it just ground oats? I notice on the ingredients list that there is white flour in it also. A friend told me that the white flour is necessary because of the gluten that makes the bread rise. Anybody know anything about that? When making a bean bread, is that a matter of just adding ground beans to white flour also? Thanks.

[Kat]

As far as I know, the white flour is used because it is lighter and rises higher. All of the totally whole wheat breads we've tried have been so dense because of the whole wheat flour that they don't rise that high. Whole wheat flour has gluten in it too. I think it's just the difference in density between the two.
Love the recipe Avenger was talking about. I make that for picnics sometimes. Good stuff.

[fallout boy]

i need too store more beans

[BigJohn]

[QUOTE=Patriotic Sheepdog;1751]I like the black beans as well and have several stored.

Question about corn though. Is triple clean corn from the feed store safe for human consumption? I have heard yes and no from diferent people I trust. Is popcorn better? I have hesitated on storing the "triple clean feed corn" because of the difference of opinion. I found a source that I can get 50# bags of triple clean corn for $9.00. Sounds like a cheap food source to supplement the storage plan if it is safe to eat.

Would love to hear from others than may have used it. Thanks...QUOTE]

That's a good price. And yes, any whole grain specified for livestock is safe for humans. I buy a lot of fodder grade wheat and clean it myself. (Some grades of animal fodder are dirtier because cows don't mind a little alphalfa or stray oats and soybeans mixed in their grain). If I had a good source of corn like yours, I would probably store a lot of it. I store popcorn because I can get it sometimes for as little as 25 cents a pound. It's pure convenience, not really preferrence. It does make good meal, but I suspect dent corn would taste great too if you grind it yourself.