Instructions: * Cooking time varies with bean types and the ingredients cooking with them. Baby limas, great northern beans, and small white beans take less cooking than garbanzos (chickpeas) and kidney beans. Dried beans will roughly double their volume when cooked.

* Boil garbanzo and red kidney beans with three times their volume of water in a large pot on the stove top for 10 minutes. Drain the beans in a colander and discard the water. Add the beans to other ingredients in the slow cooker.

* Soften beans completely before combining them with sweeteners (including brown sugar, honey, maple syrup, and molasses) or acid foods (such as vinegar or tomatoes), which actually harden legumes during cooking. Heres an easy way to do it: Boil beans for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat, cover the pot, and allow the beans to simmer until theyre tender, about l-l/2 hours. Discard the water. Add to ingredients in the slow cooker. -

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