Today I’m going to make a batch of good old chili.  Last night I dumped a bag of red beans out onto the counter top in order to sort them and look for rocks and other debris that usually finds its way into the bag of beans.  This is something my dad taught me to do many, many years ago and its become a habit.

I recall quite a few years back an article in the newspaper that was supposedly from the USDA stating the need to look over beans before cooking them was not needed, as the process’ used to prepare the beans before packaging removed all the foreign things from the beans and the beans were all washed and ready for use.  Of course at the time I called hog wash to that.

As I sorted the beans last night I suddenly found a very sizable rock!  One that would certainly break a tooth if you bit into it.  I looked even closer for things after that.  And as I proceeded to sort I found more and more undesirable things.

Check out that big rock near the bottom of the picture.  The largest one I have ever found while sorting beans.  But near the center of the picture are three smaller rocks.  This is not a good thing to be finding in a bag of beans.

It’s a habit of mine to take some of the split beans out as well and some of the ones that have obvious dirt embedded in dimples.  But let it be known too I don’t take all the split beans out as I sort it.

The finding of 4 rocks in one bag of beans made me wonder if there was a warning on the package the beans came in.

Yep, right there “in plain sight”, IF you look for it.

So, again my curiosity started getting the best of me.  I have grown beans before but not the kind you make chili out of, they are called “dried beans”.  I’ve never grown them.  So my search began about how dried beans are grown and harvested.  It should have been a no brainer, but sometimes I think my brain has gone south.  Dry beans are grown just like any kind of bean, in rows planted fairly close together.  They are allowed to grow until the outside shell is rather crusty and begins to separate.  Then in moves a cutting machine that cuts the vines and puts them in windrows.  After that windrow has some time to dry as well, in comes a threshing machine that separates the beans from the rest of the vine and shell.

Here is a video I found:

Is it any wonder how rocks can get mixed up with the beans?  I had no idea this is how they harvested the beans.

And then the beans are sent to a packaging plant where they are washed and sorted by size etc. and put into bags for sale.  I never found a good video of the inside of one of the packaging plants, so there isn’t one on here for you to see.

So, I guess to find four rocks in one bag of beans isn’t such a bad deal given all the dirt that that harvester is kicking up.

So keep sorting those beans!

Bears Butt

Jan. 6, 2013