Does anyone cook beans from regular dried beans in camp? I feel like they would cook pretty fast with an overnight soak, but hate to use that much fuel. I think cooking over the fire would work, but the carbon on pots has always been hard to deal with. It gets on hands, clothes and other stuff when packed. I haven't found freeze dried beans without other spices added, and they tend to disintegrate, so I'm wondering if it is worth dealing with the soot to try to cook them in camp.

If you want to cook beans in the wild get a backpacking pressure cooker. Still takes an hour. Soot on pots can be dealt with using gloves and decent stuff sacks for the pots. Better yet buy bulk dehydrated cooked beans. Easy to find all over the net (Google is your friend try searching "dehydrated cooked beans"). I buy from Harmony House , a variety of their beans make up the protein base for most of my tripping dinners.

OK, Follow up question. Do the Harmony House Red beans hold together better than pinto beans? They look a little less broken up in the picture. We dehydrated our own pinto beans in the past and they were pretty mushy.

I just place my sooty pots into a drawstring bag.

I dehydrate a couple of cans of baked beans each year and they rehydrate and cook up just like out of the can -- not much fuel and no mess with sooty pans.

Freeleo1: "OK, Follow up question. Do the Harmony House Red beans hold together better than pinto beans? They look a little less broken up in the picture. We dehydrated our own pinto beans in the past and they were pretty mushy. "

I've had good luck with all the Harmony House beans. I primarily use the Pinto, Black and Red Beans, on occasion the great northern. All of them hold up well, though the great northern will disappear if cooked long enough. Their dried veggies are quite good as well.

I cook my beans in a pressure cooker at home and then I dehydrate them for my trips. It's not quite the same as having fresh beans, but it is a lot easier.

We regularly make calico beans with ground turkey in the crock pot at home. We always fill it to the brim and dehydrate some for camping. It comes back to life very nicely. We turn it in to more of a soup when in camp than thick beans. it's one of my favorite camping meals.

We also dehydrate pinto beans and black beans - canned or homemade, rehydrate in camp for tacos with rice and foil pouch chicken or pork. They work well for that.

Agree on Harmony House. Great place to get ingredients such as beans.

We ended up dehydrating our own beans in the dehydrator oven. We decided the problem the last time was the beans we dehydrated were too intensely flavored to be enjoyable when rehydrated. We like Ranch Style beans and home, but I don't know if the flavors intensify or if we just don't want that much spice when we are tired and barely feel like eating anyway. I dehydrated a can of Bushes plain pinto beans. I retained some of the juice, but rinsed the beans and let them drain well. I dehydrated the beans and small separate puddle of the bean juice on parchment paper, then lightly vacuumed sealed them. They were really good and rehydrated well. I put boiling water on them and let them sit while I got the rest of the meal ready then heated them on the stove.