Dry Pinto Beans

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TONYAGOOCH
TONYAGOOCH Posts: 470 Member
in Food and Nutrition
How much does a 1/4 cup of dried bean come to after it's cooked? The NI on the package of beans I bought says 60 calories for 1/4 dry. Who in their right mind eats dry beans? lol
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  • HisShadow
    HisShadow Posts: 59 Member
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    Well, you cook them in water. How much does water add? ;)
  • TONYAGOOCH
    TONYAGOOCH Posts: 470 Member
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    lol...ok smarty pants. But they expand. So a 1/4 cup of dry wouldn't equal a 1/4 cup of cooked right? I'm thinking 1/2 cup but not sure.
  • Nutrition1st
    Nutrition1st Posts: 216 Member
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    http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/legumes-and-legume-products/4430/2
  • stylistchik
    stylistchik Posts: 1,436 Member
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    Yeah they usually double in size so 1/4 c dry would be about 1/2 c cooked. Same cals though for the 1/2 cup cooked since water doens't add calories, or you could just have the 1/4 c cooked for half the cals. Hope that made sense.
  • TONYAGOOCH
    TONYAGOOCH Posts: 470 Member
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    http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/legumes-and-legume-products/4430/2

    Thanks.
  • slainger
    slainger Posts: 150 Member
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    Measure out your beans (say 2 cups, or 8 servings), cook them, and re-measure. Divide your new measurement by the number of servings you started with (for this example, 8). That is the only way I can think to do it. And probably do so each time, as the beans will absorb the water differently each time you cook them (time allowed to cook, amount of water, etc).
  • meg7399
    meg7399 Posts: 672 Member
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    Pasta, beans, rice all say dry on the NI on packaging...as long as you cook in water the NI will not change. When food like this cooks and absorbs water it gets bigger but nothing actually changes with the food...you understand this right?
  • TONYAGOOCH
    TONYAGOOCH Posts: 470 Member
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    Yeah they usually double in size so 1/4 c dry would be about 1/2 c cooked. Same cals though for the 1/2 cup cooked since water doens't add calories, or you could just have the 1/4 c cooked for half the cals. Hope that made sense.

    This is closer to what I was thinking too. However I did add a can of rotel and some seasoning to it so I may add a few more calories.
  • cfregon
    cfregon Posts: 147
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    I typically measure out the dry beans in 1/4 cup increments when i make something...say 1 cup in a recipe: then I just make sure the recipe makes four servings.... no worries there, I used a single serving of beans, etc. I agree with "Smarty pants", water doesn't add anything, so where's the dilemma? Just make sure you've properly measured out the dried beans before cooking.
  • TONYAGOOCH
    TONYAGOOCH Posts: 470 Member
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    Pasta, beans, rice all say dry on the NI on packaging...as long as you cook in water the NI will not change. When food like this cooks and absorbs water it gets bigger but nothing actually changes with the food...you understand this right?

    Of course I undersnd this. I was just wondering how much the 1/4 cup will expand to after it cooks.
  • taunto
    taunto Posts: 6,420 Member
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    Allow me a crack at explaining this. And this works for all "Dry foods" that expand after cooking (Beans, rice, lentils etc)

    Calories in dry beans: 60
    Calories in water: 0
    Calories in total: 60

    Just because a food expanded after cooking didn't added any calories :) the 1/4th of a cup dry give the same amount of calories if that cup expanded to 1 cup. As long as you didn't added anymore beans, no new source of calories were added were there? Now if you added other ingredients, then simply add those ingredients calories to the mix

    Hopefully this helped
  • taunto
    taunto Posts: 6,420 Member
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    Pasta, beans, rice all say dry on the NI on packaging...as long as you cook in water the NI will not change. When food like this cooks and absorbs water it gets bigger but nothing actually changes with the food...you understand this right?

    Of course I undersnd this. I was just wondering how much the 1/4 cup will expand to after it cooks.

    Depending on the food, most dry foods expand to anywhere from double to quadruple. Pinto beans typically expand about double easily. It really depends alot on the beans
  • TONYAGOOCH
    TONYAGOOCH Posts: 470 Member
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    I typically measure out the dry beans in 1/4 cup increments when i make something...say 1 cup in a recipe: then I just make sure the recipe makes four servings.... no worries there, I used a single serving of beans, etc. I agree with "Smarty pants", water doesn't add anything, so where's the dilemma? Just make sure you've properly measured out the dried beans before cooking.

    Well, I just opened the package and poured it all into my crockpot this morning with a can of rotel, garlic, pinto bean seasoning, salt and 6 slices of chopped bacon and water. I will measure it all out after it is cooked to get the exact number of servings. Which now that I think about it, my question was pretty much a waste of time. lol All I need to do is figure the amount of calories in the package of beans along with the other ingredients and divide it by the number of cups I get when it's done. Wow! Sometimes I amaze myself with the "blonde moments" I've been getting lately. I am sorry to have bothered anyone. It's not like I don't do this measuring thing every single day. lol UGH!
  • drgooch
    drgooch Posts: 68 Member
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    i'm not going to say a word......:bigsmile:
  • mcarter99
    mcarter99 Posts: 1,666 Member
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    Tonya- It's not a blond moment or a dumb question. If you don't divide out and count up the number of servings in the cooked pot of beans or pasta, you have no idea if you're eating '.5c dry' or what.
  • TONYAGOOCH
    TONYAGOOCH Posts: 470 Member
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    i'm not going to say a word......:bigsmile:

    You hush it! lol
  • TONYAGOOCH
    TONYAGOOCH Posts: 470 Member
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    Tonya- It's not a blond moment or a dumb question. If you don't divide out and count up the number of servings in the cooked pot of beans or pasta, you have no idea if you're eating '.5c dry' or what.


    I know but in all honesty it was a pretty dumb question because I KNOW how to do this stuff. Why I wasn't thinking about measuring out how many servings it would be after I cooked them is beyond me. I always measure out my foods after they are cooked to find out the number of servings in the recipe. :embarassed:
  • Chimel31
    Chimel31 Posts: 1
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    Well measuring starts with cooking, so you can't measure other than using the raw dry ingredients. Like the previous poster, I measure one quarter cup of beans and one quarter cup of rice per person per meal. I usually soak the beans the morning before and cook them in the evening, so they just need gentle reheating the next day. The rice needs to be cooked right before the meal, but beans are better reheated. I use a broth with onion, celery, carrot, red hot pepper and red miso.

    When serving the meal, knowing how many cups of cooked beans there are does not usually help, because I am not serving with a cup, but with a spoon or ladle. If you cook for 4 persons, it is not difficult to serve each of them one quarter of however many beans are in the pan, regardless of how many cups and tablespoons they make. Besides, every person has different calorie requirements because of their age, body mass and physical activity level, so the trick is to cook extra portions, which gives you some security margin to guesstimate how much to serve to each person, while still having some food left for refills or left-over for a future meal.

    By the way, pinto beans are 670 calories to the cup, 168 to the quarter cup, not 60. I am guessing you are using Safeway's pinto beans, which were and still are mislabeled. Probably a typo, 60 instead of 160. I just reported it to them.
  • Amiicus
    Amiicus Posts: 2
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    The only problem I have with measuring cooked beans is after said beans are cooked, the water you added isnt water anymore, it's bean juice (water with disolved bean solids from the cooking process). You could assume that beans have the same caloric value as bean juice, but I think it likely that that assumption is false.

    Notice: Below is how I do it and I am not to saying anyone not doing it this way is "wrong". This is just the most accurate way I've found to measure cooked beans per serving. I tend to measure everything I eat in a similar manner.

    First off.. if at all possible, I measure everything with a caloric value by weight, especially solids. For instance, I never use "1 cup" of beans.. I always use "5.08oz/0.317lb of beans" or whatever. Liquids tend to be measured fairly accurately in cups, if what you are measuring is not a combination of 2 or more liquids or a liquid with disolved solids.

    I weight a quantity of beans, say, 1lb of beans, then add however many cups of water, according to the recipe I'm using. I rarely weigh the water as a percentage is going to evaporate during cooking. While "Smarty pants" is right that water is water is water and it doesn't have a caloric value, after cooking is complete, bean juice is not water anymore. I determine how many servings my quanity of beans supply and that determines what percentage, by weight, I eat per serving, after the beans are cooked.

    To do this, I need the weight of the cooked beans, strained and weigh the bean juice separately. For this example, let's say my 1lb of beans and quanity of water resulted in 2lbs of beans (strained) and 2 lbs of bean juice (rarely will it be a whole number, but the process is the same, either way) and the label on my beans says my 1lb of beans is 12.5 servings. Since I like to eat an equal amount of beans and juice and I want 1 total serving, I'd divde 12.5 servings by the total weight , which comes to 5.12oz/145g of bean and juice, for this example, and then measure half of each or 2.56oz of each. You could divide 12.5 servings by the total 4lbs and try to get 5.12oz with an equal amount of each, but I would likely get more of one than the other. As I got to the bottom of the pot, I would likely do it this way (combined weight) but while there is lots of each, I'd measure them separately.

    Notice: This is just an arbitrary example. I'm not saying eating 5.12oz is 1 serving. It will always vary based on how much water you added, on how much water evaporates during cooking and how much water is absorbed by the beans and the kind of beans to determine how much both beans and juice will weigh.

    I understand not everyone will take it to such an extreme, but I figure if I'm going to measure it at all, I might as well measure it as accurately as I possibly can or not do it at all.

    I guess you could make less math for yourself and weigh and cook the amount you intend to eat, but I imagine cooking dry beans a serving at a time to be much more tedious then doing the math to figure 1 serving, after cooking a known quanity of beans. But... cooking 1 or two servings of dry beans by weight and eating all the beans and juice would be as accurate.

    If anyone has a better way to do the above, please say so, but this is how I have been measuring servings for cooked dry beans, to date.
  • rmawint
    rmawint Posts: 1
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    FYI 1lb beans is usually ~2c dry beans.

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