How to Make a Healthy Snack
McBites = Modern McNuggets?
Slow Cooker Recipes
When Should Bars Cut You Off?
How to Scrape a Vanilla Bean
Best Riffs on Hot Chocolate
Are dried beans still edible after they are used as pie weights?
When people blind bake a pie crust (a term that means prebaking the crust without its filling), they often line it with aluminum foil or parchment paper weighted down by dried beans. The beans keep the bottom of the crust from puffing up and bubbling.
After the beans are baked with the crust, you could still theoretically cook and eat them, says Rose Levy Beranbaum, author of The Pie and Pastry Bible and The Cake Bible. “But you wouldn’t want to, as the beans take on an unpleasant aroma.” After a few uses, they develop an acrid, overly toasted smell and what Jena Roberts, a representative from the National Food Laboratory, describes as a concentrated “beany note.”
Baking the dried beans causes a chemical reaction called pyrolysis, in which the sugars and/or amino acids are converted into other compounds that give off a weird smell, Roberts says. “They would impart a different flavor profile to your soup than you’d expect, but there are zero food safety issues,” she says, because bacteria require a water source to grow.
Instead of dealing with smelly beans, Beranbaum says she just uses rice for a weight, and she lines her pie crust with parchment paper or a large coffee urn filter. “A little of the butter in the crust comes through the parchment, coating the rice, and the rice becomes toasted, making it excellent to use as a pilaf,” she says.
CHOW’s Nagging Question column appears every Friday.
Great idea keeping the pre-sized parchment. I hate re-cutting those circles! You can also use the cardboard, circles sold at craft stores for under cakes, in your blind baked shells, then just drop your beans on top. Or use an empty can filled with beans!
Hope you washed those pennies first...yuck! :-)
Coins! I've made it a habit to empty out my pockets every night and collect the coins. This let me save up quite a few bucks every couple of months.
After seeing Heston Blumenthal use a bunch of coins to weigh down one of his crusts, I decided to give it a try. Works well, doesn't damage the coins, and no odour. Plus coins are heavier and flatter than beans, and heat up nicely, giving you a...+READ
Coins! I've made it a habit to empty out my pockets every night and collect the coins. This let me save up quite a few bucks every couple of months.
After seeing Heston Blumenthal use a bunch of coins to weigh down one of his crusts, I decided to give it a try. Works well, doesn't damage the coins, and no odour. Plus coins are heavier and flatter than beans, and heat up nicely, giving you a more uniform crust.
Note: I used only pennies when I did this. Probably a good idea to stick wtih one kind of coin.-COLLAPSE
I've been recycling the same little beans I use for the occassional blind baking procedure for YEARS!
I just wait till they cool and then tip them back into a little plastic container, along with the same piece of parchment paper that is the perfect size for my ceramic pie plate. I re-use that, too.
Hence, I wouldn't dream of eating those beans. They still have their purpose in life!
I had always heard that if beans become too dry, which baking them again and again seems likely to do, that it becomes virtually impossible to properly rehydrate them for cooking. Seems that would be an additional problem.
Why not use green coffee beans instead? Then you'll get a lovely fresh coffee smell wafting from the oven.
Unlikely to make drinkable coffee though. And coffee beans aren't very heavy. And they are definitely more expensive than rice.
With the price of rice skyrocketing, metal pie weights may be a good investment!
I ate one in culinary school, mainly just to see what it was like. The chef wasn't really sure how old they were. I think I died a little that day. So, yes, they are edible in the strictest sense of the word. But are they tasty? no. Would I eat another one? for the right price, most definitely.
Thank you SO MCUH for asking and answering that question. I have been wondering that for years.