kidney beans - long and slow or warm through?

[therewearethen]

Making a chilli, got it in the slow cooker, should I put the kidney beans in now so they'll be in for a few hours or shove in for the last half hour to just warm through? I find they are hard sometimes.

Oh and I'm using the tinned one's in water/brine and say just heat up

I usually just put them in at the beginning, if they break down a little it helps to thicken the chili :) I should say that I am also a lazy cook and would likely forget to add them later!

I hate hard beans, I'd put them in sooner rather than later.

rinse them off and put them in now, they really benefit from the extra cooking, makes the chilli really thick and the beans take on the flavours too

mmmmmm

Oh and I find the best kidney beans are Tesco value ones, I find most others are harder!

If they're tinned they'll be safe either way - some slow cooker recipes say put beans in towards the end (I guess so they don't break up), so it's obviously fine. Just depends how mushy you want them. It's only when you're using dried beans that you have to be careful, and I seem to recall you have to fast-boil them first before adding them to the slow coker.

giraffe

Yes I have that recollection too. I think the fast boiling is to remove some sort of toxin from the beans, which is present in dry or uncooked beans but has already been removed from tinned beans, which are cooked.

I put them in about half 2, so will update after I've eaten later! Thanks guys

I second tesco value kidney beans for being nice and soft rather than hard and crunchy