Can you reuse beans after blind baking a pie crust?

[pagesinthesun]

Happy Thanksgiving!

[greygarious]

Yes you can. A few years ago, because on another thread people were adamant about old pie beans being uncookable, I soaked and cooked a pound of white beans that had been in a glass jar for over a decade, having been used a few times as pie weights. They took longer to cook, and were bland (I didn't salt them) but were certainly edible. If memory serves, I put some of them into vegetable soup and used the rest in mixed salads.

[piwakawaka]

can reuse them for blind baking as others have said but don't try eating them - they may never soften enough...

[tardigrade]

Anecdote from a friend: she used the same dried beans for blind-baking a number of pies over a few years. Finally, she decided to toss them into her compost heap. A good number of them sprouted.

What were you planning on reusing them for? More baking? Cooking? If you're just using them as weights, I don't see why you can't get several uses out of them.

[kseiverd]

NOT an expert! But know that old beans that have never been used as pie weights... not to successful in cooking them?!? Not very successful in making pies, but imagine they have and indefinite shelf-life as weights??

[DuchessNukem]

My feeling without having experimented: no. I consider how fresh any food is when cooking, including dried beans; I've cooked moderately elderly beans (4-5 yrs old) and found them slow to cook and less flavorful. That said, others have re-used their pie weights with varying degrees of success:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/843055
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/731551

Why not cool them and store them for next pie?

[miss_belle]

I like the way you put that "Moderately elderly" 4-5 year old beans and slow to bake . Is it any wonder?

[Isolda]

I have kept beans for up to a year to reuse as pie weights. After that, toss them and get a new bag. You'll know when it's time for a change.

[sunflwrsdh]

+3 on the reusing them as pie weights. I also put them in a Zip-loc bag, and keep them in my baking drawer and re-use as pie weights. Agree with Isolda, toss them after a year, and get a new bag. Beans are pretty cheap:)

[ricepad]

Why toss them? Do they start to disintegrate or something?

[sunshine842]

they start to get a little crumbly -- the heating and cooling starts to play havoc with the outer layers. But you can use them for a year or more (I'd guess 8-10 times? Purely guessing the number of pies made in that period....)

Not harmful, but cosmetically not all that nice to have little bits of beans stuck to your pie crust.

And they don't soften very well when you cook them if you've been using them as pie weights. Edible, but not very good (Experience.)

[ricepad]

I always figured it wasn't a good idea to cook beans that had been used as pie weights, but I didn't know they'd get crumbly. I don't bake that many pies (maybe 1-3 times a year), so I'm still on my original batch of pie weight beans!

[AnnieWilliams]

Only reuse them as pie weights. After you put them in the oven they are toast.

[darrentran87]

I wouldn't. Beans are cheap anyways, so why would you risk it? I feel that all the heat would do something to the beans... and not in a good way.