can you pressure cook kidney beans and chick peas without soaking them first?

Of course you can pressure cook without soaking, but it takes more time. You can soak them overnight or soak them in warm water for a couple of hours.

Soaking has advantages;

They cook faster.

Adding a pinch of baking soda helps, it softens the hard water. People in India often do this when cooking chickpeas and kidney beans. If you have washed the beans properly before soaking, you can cook them in the same water. Be careful about the amount though, or your beans will taste of soda.

We Indians tend to add salt before boiling, which is supposed to delay the cooking time, it probably does. Unslated ones become softer and more easily mashed, I think.

thankyou for the reply. could you give me a rough estimation as to how long youu think i would need to cook kidney beans and chickepeas for in the pressure cooker without soaking them first?

thanks

i will wait for your reply and give it a try. i might make your kidney bean curry later

If soaked overnight, pressure cook for about 15-20 minutes. Pressure cooker performances vary, you will get used to yours soon enough. Generally, each recipe of mine gives the time required, so take a look at the individual recipe.

Last week, cooking chilli concarne for the kids, I realised that we were out of tinned kidney beans and so decided to wash some dry ones and pressure cook without soaking. I have one of the newer WMF cookers which requires 18 - 20 mins for pre-soaked beans. On this occasion it took 45 mins, and the beans somehow felt less juicy and less creamy than usual. So I think that pre-soaking is advisable.

Often gathered wisdom of generations works. It has sound reasons behind it :-).