Legumes, blue zones, and easy cooking

Research shows that plant based diets lead to longer healthier lives. People around the world who live in blue zones, areas that have exceptionally long life spans have been shown to share some common dietary patterns even though their cuisines are very different. Consumption of legumes is a common theme in blue zone diets. Legumes contain a rich array of beneficial compounds from anthocyanins, which make black beans black, and are better known as the blue constituent in blueberries, to large amounts of fiber which lowers cholesterol, beans are a true superfood. Beans can take a long time to cook when prepared from their dry form and mindful consumers have many good reasons to avoid the convenience of canned foods, which contain harmful chemicals in the can liners. The good news is that you can cook legumes from scratch in as little as 25 minutes using either a pressure cooker or instant pot. These devices make adopting a plant based diet easy, they save valuable time and they enable last minute homecooked legume based meals. I really love my Swiss made Kuhn Rikon stainless steel pressure cooker. They come in many sizes and will last a lifetime. There are many other options, but the bottom line is that using pressure to cook your legumes reduces cooking time by 70%. For example, lentils which normally take 1 hour, take 20 minutes and black beans which normally take 2.5 hours take 45 minutes when cooked using pressure. I will be publishing a series of my personal recipes using the pressure cooker to make legume based dishes over the next month. Check them out and let me know what you think. In health!

Dr. Jade