I've been making these in my pressure cooker lately, and they're really good and easy:

Recipe: Vegetarian Baked Beans (Pressure Cooker)

This recipe is delicious, and you will not want to eat canned vegetarian baked beans ever again.
Ingredients:

2 cups navy beans, soaked (see below)
1/2 tsp. dry mustard
1/4 tsp. ground pepper
1 medium onion, minced
1/4 cup molasses
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup catsup
3 1/2 cups water
salt, as desired
Directions:

Soak beans (see below), then drain. Add navy beans and remaining ingredients except salt to cooker. Close cover securely. Place pressure regulator on vent pipe and cook 45 minutes with a very slow, steady flow of steam escaping from the pressure regulator. Let pressure drop of its own accord. Season to taste with salt. Makes 4 servings.
Nutrition Information Per Serving: 397 Calories, 6 g Fat, 8 mg Cholesterol
How To Soak Dry Beans For Pressure Cooking:

Ingredients:
2 cups dry beans
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 Tbsp. salt
water to cover beans
Directions:
Place dry beans in cooker. Add cooking oil, salt, and water to cover beans. Soak overnight. In most instances, dry beans will almost regain their original shape, freshness, and color.

I've been learning a lot about beans recently, but more like pintos, black beans, navy beans. I always think of limas as more like a vegetable.

What I've learned is that soaking doesn't actually do anything particularly good for beans. People say it reduces the flatulence, but that seems to be an old wives tale. It does make them cook quicker, but not quicker enough to make it worth the loss of quality. What it does do is make them mushy. Also, there are wives tales about what makes beans tough. The only one I've heard/done proven is acid. Acids should go in after the beans are cooked.

The real trick to making good beans is to put them in the oven. If they're good and fresh (haven't been in the cupboard for five years), a whole big pot of beans takes less than an hour to cook through. Cover well with water, an inch or so above bean level, and bring to a boil. Cover and put them in the oven at 300-350ð depending on your oven. Mine is very up to temperature and 300ð is good. Most people might want 325ð or a little more, though low and slow is a good motto. My last pot of pintos took about 50 minutes. There is some guesswork, but they're beans. Just check.

Then there's the flavor without salt. If you're used to a lot of salt, you may have an adjustment period. Do you have to watch sodium in vegetables, too? If not, adding plenty of garlic (no sodium) and onions, and some celery (has the most sodium), should give you some saltiness without spoons of salt. Can you have hot peppers? They're low sodium and can help amuse your tongue. Also, try adding in some acid at the end. Some vinegar or wine. Lemon has only a little sodium. Acid can increase a sensation of saltiness without adding salt. And there are all kinds of spices and herbs you can add to any kind of cooking that will just amp up flavor in general.

Mostly, if you find your beans are bland even after you've added vegetables and spices, you may need to reset your receptors. Try to eat them as is, maybe with something tasty on the side, and get used to how they taste. After awhile of cooking and eating low sodium, foods that used to be "tasty" will taste salty to you, and your well flavored beans will taste normal. There's way too much salt in most American food.

Oh, yeah. The kind of beans I'm talking about freeze pretty well after cooking, but like all things can lose some texture in the freezer. As to the "consequences" of eating beans, that usually comes from not being used to the quantity of fiber. Eat them when you won't be embarrassed, and keep them as part of your diet, and eat them regularly, and the effect should wear off. As an alternative, you can sprout them. That is supposed to de-gas-ify them, and also make them easier to digest in general.

This post was edited by plllog on Sun, Jan 18, 15 at 0:18

I agree with plllog, if you are accustomed to eating salty foods, it takes awhile for you to get accustomed to eating without it. After a few days away from salty foods you'll start to actually taste the food, not the salt. You'll also notice you don't eat as much food when it's unsalted because salt stimulates your appetite. A trip to your local library should provide a large number of low-sodium cook books to help you out with recipes, and I've included a link below that may help you out.

About 90% of the time I sprout beans before cooking them these days, which increases the nutrition, makes them easier to digest, and removes the gassiness. If you aren't accustomed to eating a lot of beans in your diet, start slowly and keep increasing them in your diet.

I ALWAYS freeze my sprouted/cooked beans in user-friendly amounts.

HOW TO: Lay cooked beans on a small rimmed cookie sheet and quick-freeze them (just until they are completely frozen, 15-30-minutes, then place them in a user-friendly amount in a container/bag and they will remain relative easy to break into individual beans if you need to portion them. If you dump wet cooked beans into a container/bag and then freeze them, you will end up with a bean "brick" because they will fuse together. Quick-freezing them first in a single layer before placing them in your storage container/bag will help them remain pourable - once you tap the container/bag on the countertop. If you use small snack-size plastic zip-lock bags and lay the bags flat, the beans will remain loose in a user-friendly amount that's nice for adding to a salad, egg dish, and many other applications. Place the snack bags with beans in a plastic container so you can keep track of them in the freezer.

FYI - you can also find lima beans (and other beans) in the frozen food section of your store, but I'm not sure about the sodium content. Lima beans are also found in frozen mixed vegetables, which are easy to add to soup, casseroles, or just as a side dish.

Lima beans are one of the more gas-producing beans, along with navy beans. You can always take Beano when you eat gas-producing beans (as well as other vegetables that produce gas), which provides the enzymes to digest the gas-producing compounds. I just sprout them first, which does the same thing, as well as improves the nutritional profile.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: All Recipes - low-sodium recipes

My baked bean recipe is almost identical to debbyga's. I bake them in the oven in a bean pot at 400 for an hour and then reduce the heat to 350 for about 3 more, until tender. My family loves them.

Barb, once the Lima beans are cooked, stir in some sour cream and finely chopped onions. Season with black pepper. Yummy.

Pressure cooker for beans. 1/2 hour to 1 hour, any beans, old beans, new bean, ----No soaking needed.

To avoid PC eruptions, put beans in a separate pot inside the PC. Basically pressure steam the beans. The beans never boil over and clot the vent.

dcarch

I cook my own beans all the time. I have an old-fashioned pressure cooker with the gauge that has to be calibrated and has to rock at a certain rate . . . blech, I just don't care to fuss with it most of the time and I can't afford to get a new one. So I do my beans in the crockpot, and I do soak to reduce the cooking time. The great thing about the crockpot is that you don't have to watch them all the time so I often have to work from home or on the weekend when I am busy I can put them in and forget about watching them. After they are finished, I take about 3/4 of them out, put them in pint canning jars with about an inch of head space and seal and label and freeze. I can take them out and microwave them quickly if I need them right away or thaw them if I am organized enough to do that. With the rest of the beans from the crockpot I make something, usually bean soup.

The quality of the beans is far superior to what you get in the store. I can't advise you much on the flavor without salt, but I usually add a bay leaf or two to mine. I make my limas with tomato sauce and greek seasoning, add walnuts and kasseri or feta cheese as toppers at the end. But then I know that greek cheeses are salty so that won't help you much. But one thing you could try is to add some sundried tomatoes, they pack a very powerful flavor punch. I add them to canned tomato sauces, they are great for that little extra. Plus lots of garlic and onions. If you do that along with the bay leaf you should be good. Other spices that Greeks might add are dill and oregano. Just remember to add the tomato stuff at the very end of cooking, since the acid in the tomato will make the bean skin tough otherwise. If the beans still seem a little bland, add a dash of balsamic vinegar or red wine vinegar.

Here is a link that might be useful: Greek lima bean recipe

I soak and cook dried black beans regularly, freeze on a baking sheet then in portions. I use them with ground beef in meatloaves, and in mixed vegetable dishes and rice. They're a lot of added protein.