Uppa
Smogon University
11 June 2026
the forces at play these days (economy, my ego as a cook, my ego as a vegetarian) have many a time compelled me to cook beans from scratch, that is, from 1-2lb dry bulk bags, rather than using the canned stuff. the math works out to be a little under 1/4th the price of buying canned beans for the amount you get, which sounds agreeable and wise if i were to be eating beans all the time. I want to believe myself so badly to have a Knack for cooking, far above the par for a typical college student of my description, but I'm routinely humbled by how incapable i am of preparing the humble Bean. Every time i make them, I have to soak them overnight and upon doing so most of the beans will have either a. shriveled up b. absorbed too much water and split or c. absorbed some amount of water but the skin separated. Eagle eye that I am, I notice that i've already fucked up whatever recipe i was following on the first step. I'm told these "duds" are usually the result of expired beans. Perhaps being in a college town, I am unwittingly buying rotten, unsold stock of dried beans that are being criminally pawned off to unsuspecting home cooks like myself since most of the population is living off of their parents' allowance of bar food and little caesar's instead of buying groceries. Maybe it’s a problem with my town’s tap water, or an overcorrection on my part by daring to Filter the water I use to soak the beans with my good old Brita. Nevertheless, I use the soaked beans, since despite the majority of them being Duds i concede that they’ve holistically swollen by three sizes like a grinch’s heart, like most recipes say to watch for. If you have never cooked beans before from scratch, without a pressure cooker i must add, you must understand that it’s a full afternoon’s affair. Unlike the noble baked potato, you can’t let the pot of beans sit unattended for most of the cooking time since the starch freed by cooking them will form a gravy that will burn on the bottom of the pot if not stirred intermittently. Now, while cooking the beans over a couse of 2-3 hours, a fear sets in over the possibility of me somehow setting off my apartment’s smoke detector with the constant billows of steam the pot emits, despite my stirring the pot appropriately to prevent burning. This isnt necessarily a slight at beans itself, just a combined fear of loud noises, the possibility of burning down my apartment building while the pot is left unattended, and the fact that my smoke alarm has a very real tendency to be set off randomly when a speck of crud got onto the burner im using. Theres several smoke detector-like doohickeys peppering the walls of my place, most of which I can’t identify. That is to say, i dont actually know where my smoke detector is, let alone how to disable it. For the purpose of padding this essay, I’ll throw in another uppa-only experience since few people will still be reading at this point: I like to leave my air conditioning off during the summer and keep the windows open, so that it can feel like a sweet vacation home and not like a creepy corporate office like from Severance. This is usually a pretty good vibe and quite comfortable, but boiling a massive pot for 2 hours straight with poor ventilation in the kitchen literally raises the ambient temperature and humidity of my entire unit to an unbearable degree and it takes hours for it to go back to normal. The resulting dish is usually nearly inedible, since all the beans soaked up water in different ways at the start, some beans completely disintegrated while others are left mealy, astringent, and undercooked. In the interest of not ruining it further, I usually just eat it at that point. Dealing with the leftovers is another ordeal. Im ill-prepared to weather the guilt of throwing away over a pound of theoretically edible protein, so I always freeze the leftovers no matter how bad it is. for this, i smear the beans into several ice cube trays and freeze them before popping them out into plastic bags for easier portioning. that sounds gross on the surface, but its more elegant than the alternative of freezing the entire pot in a single tray and then unceremoniously breaking it into icy chunks like a half-assed homemade ice cream, half of which being entirely gravy since the beans sink to the bottom as it cools. I seldom eat the beans after theyve been frozen. I often have quite a few gallon bags in my freezer of bean dishes from months past, and sometimes I will try to reheat them. Theyre always worse than they were the day I made them, as if the sour memory of preparing the dish has accumulated negative desire like a cursed doll from a horror movie. My beans, a wretched child of omelas that serves to put all of my other cooking into perspective. There’s probably some bean recipes that will reheat just fine, but mine never do. Shame on me for using fresh herbs in my cooking, I guess. I learned that microwaving cilantro after its been frozen for a few weeks makes the entire dish taste irreparably like burning plastic. I just think all of this can be easily avoided if one just chooses to buy canned beans instead which have a perfect texture and can be turned into dishes in like 15 minutes, but instead i ram my proverbial head against this metaphorical wall time and time again, going through hell and back to avoid confronting my own ego. “Who am I if i cant cook beans from scratch?” am I no better than a high school freshman scared of boiling pasta? perchance.
xoxo from Uppa
