When you cook Red Beans...

A common pitfall in cooking red beans is adding sugar too early, before the red beans are well-cooked. I learnt this, together with many other tips, when I was trying to make the Green Tea Cake III.

All along, The Mother has been helping me and The Sister boiling red beans for Green Tea Cake. It was the first time I boiled red beans myself on my independent journey with Green Tea Cake.

Below are the tips.
1. Soak the beans in water before boiling.
This helps the beans to be cooked faster. (I did this step)

2. Put a porcelain spoon, not metal, in the pot of red beans (with water) before heating up.
This accelerates the cooking. To get to the "beans are splitted" stage, it takes 30mins.
Note: Never introduce the porcelain spoon when the soup is heated up as this will cause cracks in the spoon.

3. Never add sugar before the beans are cooked. Always add sugar last.
This is the common pitfall that me and The Sister made during both our first independent attempts to boil red beans. We thought that the earlier the sugar are added in, the more sweetness the red beans can absorb. Sounds scientific right?

The Father laughed at this theory. His theory is that sugar will absorb the heat, thus the beans will never be cooked. The example he quoted is that when you eat something spicy, you can coat your tongue with sugar to lower the spicy-ness.

Anyway, I didn't know it takes so much knowledge just to cook a simple red bean soup. In hostel, I always eat the green bean soup prepared by others, hence I didn't learn the art of bean cooking.