Freezing Cooked Rice

(We are out of town for the holiday weekend, so no recipes today.  I hope you find this information helpful.)

One of my favorite kitchen tricks is to keep cooked rice in my freezer.  Whenever I make fresh rice, I make a double batch.  For us, this means four cups of water and two cups of rice.  I serve it all for dinner and then put the leftovers in a zip-top bag in the freezer.  (I am moving to glass containers but the move is slow.)  It is best if the rice is still a little warm when you put it in the freezer as that helps to capture liquid in the container. If it looks dry when you take it out of the freezer, add a smidge of water before reheating.  (Like a teaspoon smidge, not a cup smidge.)

How To Soak Beans

Tomorrow's Black Eye Peas

I'm sure there are some of you who looked at my bags of beans and thought:  "How in the heck do you turn dried beans into beans that you can eat?"  Well, you could just dump the beans into your recipe, but you would need a lot of extra liquid and the results probably wouldn't be nearly as good.  Some beans would cook faster than others, and some might split open and make a bean starchy mess of your liquid.

I have to admit, it still scares me even though it is so incredibly easy.  E-A-S-Y.  If you can make soaking beans hard, I want to know how you do it.  What it isn't, however, is fast.  Soaking beans takes time, even if you use the speedy methods.  Different beans require a different amount of time, but basically there are three methods for soaking beans: