Cookie, if you are still looking for a baked bean recipe this one from Serious Eats is outstanding. It’s become my go-to for baked beans. I use RG alubia beans for it an they hold up surprisingly well.
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I’ve been a member of the Rancho Gordo Bean Club for a couple years now. Their beans have been uniformly excellent.
If you like white beans I can highly recommend the Alubia Blancas, Marcella’s, Cassoulets and Raquels. All of these are a fairly thin skinned bean and creamy inside. The flavor of the Marcella’s and Raquel’s is delicate. I’m not a huge fan of the Royal Coronas but I do like them fried with greens and topped with a poached egg.
The darker skinned beans it’s hard to beat the RG Eye of the Goat or Yellow Indian Woman, both are an all-purpose bean that works in almost anything. The RG Pintos, Scarlett Runners, Vaqueros, Yellow Eye and Domingo Rojos are also versatile.
Mayocobas (aka Peruanos), Silvias (aka Flor de Junio) and Lila’s (similar to a flor de mayo) are all outstanding and make a great base for bean salads.
A lot of people don’t really care for black beans too much. When cooked with aromatics and a big sprig of fresh epazote, the RG Midnight Blacks have changed a lot of minds.
I agree with Robert’s comment upthread that the RG garbanzos need at least an overnight soak. They cook up nicely.
RG offers some non-bean items that are also worth seeking out such as wild rice, spelt/farro, black caviar lentils, french green lentils, pineapple vinegar, banana vinegar and a product called Stardust that is a knock off of Tajin only w-a-y better.
As you can probably tell, I’m a fan 
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Do you mean like in the style of this post? I know that’s originally from an Ottolenghi recipe but I think the pictures are better with Lebovitz showing the browning/crunch that can result.
I tried that recipe over ten years ago and liked it but it was a bit of a pain with small beans and seemed like it would be more worth it with huge ones like the Royal Coronas (as originally intended).
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i love how he writes recipes / instructions usually giving visual clues. They are always so well tested and reliable.
Hmmmm, I haven’t actually read his blog in a while but I’ve been looking into accessibility standards so maybe I should check it out again
Similar much more “free form” than that recipe.
I usually start by mincing a little onion and garlic and toss it in a pan with a good amount of oil, or an oil/butter combo, just to soften and take the raw edge off. You can also add some crushed red chile flakes. When the oil is good and hot I add some drained, but not rinsed, beans. I don’t measure the beans, but it’s usually about 2 slotted spoonfulls. Stir and then leave them be. You may need to reduce the heat a bit. When the beans have gotten sufficiently crispy, carefully try and flip them. They won’t want to stick together. Use a wide turner and flip by section of your skillet. You may want to reduce the heat a little more to prevent burning. The bean liquid that adheres to the beans helps them crisp up.
While the 2nd side of the beans is cooking, poach or fry your egg.
To serve I usually put a couple of handfuls of baby spinach (or other greens) on a plate, slide the beans on top and finish with the egg(s). It ends up looking kinda like this, which was a rather freestyle breakfast with what I had in the fridge
I don’t remember exactly which bean this was other than it was definitely not a Royal Corona.
I have fried different varieties of RG beans and the techniqye works with most of them. The dark beans with tougher skin (like Scarlett Runners) hold up really well to this treatment.
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This is great @DiningDiva. It’s like Bean School!
That makes sense! Among other things I think the liquid is pretty thick with carbohydrates so that would lend itself to crisping very well. Your technique is awesome- kind of reminds me of the lacy layer that connects fried dumplings at places like Qing Dao Bread Food.
Also, nice tip about the tougher skins being more resilient!
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To salt or not to salt…that is the question for everyone that cooks a bean 
Serious Eats did the testing and here’s their take on it.
I’m old school with my bean cooking. I soak and cook on top of the stove. I tried the Serious Eats method and like it. I brine soak most of the large beans, those with tougher skins, chickpeas and even my Rancho Gordo beans. It has been my experience that some of the thinner skinned, more delicate RG white beans need no soaking and cook from start to finish in about 35-45 minutes depending upon the bean.
I have recently started adding kombu to my beans when I cook them. It has natural sea salt on it from the drying process, but also adds some umami flavor and reduces the gas producing qualities of beans.
Here is my cooking method. There is nothing particularly special about it, there are a million different ways to cook beans. Through trial and error this is what I’ve found works best for me. I have a 4 qt Staub cocotte that I use for beans. It’s cast iron which allows me to control the heat. I usually cook 1/2 pound of beans a week, sometimes more and the Staub pot has just enough room to accommodate the full 1 pound of beans. I cover by at least 2" of water, sometimes 3" To the pot I add 1/2 an onion, a lot of garlic - at least 5 or 6 large cloves - 2 bay leaves, a peeled carrot, a strip of kombu and a teaspoon of salt. Bring to a full rolling boil and boil hard for a minimum of 10 minutes and up to 15 for the thicker skinned beans and garbanzos. If the garbanzos foam or shed skins, I’ll skim and discard them. Reduce heat to a gentle simmer, cover, set a timer for 30 minutes. Check for doneness and salt at 30 mintues and adjust both as needed. The majority of the beans need another 15-20 mintues, a few need longer. When they get to the point where the insides are done I turn off the heat and let them sit.
When I first started cooking beans more frequently I was having problems with the insides getting done but the skins still being a little too tough, especially with the larger beans and some of the darker beans. Quite by accident I discovered that if I let them sit in their broth for a couple hours (or more) as they cooled down, there was sigificant softening of the skins. Once I started letting the beans sit in the pot liquor and cool, there were far fewer problems with tough skins.
I grew up eating beans but once I left home they kind of dropped out of my meal rotation because there so many other interesting things. I feel a little like I’ve come full circle. Beans are resiliant, forgiving and incredibly versatile. There are 3 cookbooks on the RG website that are all very good and, of course, bean forward. I am currently working my way through Joe Yonan’s new book Cool Beans. So far everything I’ve made (see photos below) has been a
hit.
Lalo’s Cacahuate Beans…recipe from Eddie Garcia, chef/owner of Maximo Bistro in Mexico City. The recipe called for cranberry or borlotti beans. I had neither and subbed in 1/2 pound each of pinto and rio zape beans, which are a relative bean to cranberry. Don’t be afraid to sub in beans.
Tomato & Red Pepper Soup with Lady Cream Peas…I wouldn’t know a Lady Cream Pea if it bit me on the nose, but the recommended alternative was black-eyed peas, which I had in the freezer. The soup was easy to make and even with winter tomatoes was pretty good. It will be better in the summer when produce is at it’s peak. I will also use a white bean in this instead of a pea bean
Tacu Tacu a Peruvian dish designed to use up leftover rice and beans. The recipe calls for Mayocoba (aka Peruano) beans. It will need a few tweaks to suit my tastes but it’s a fun, easy dish that goes together quickly. Traditionally it is served with the fried egg and a thin piece of steak, but really, you can do almost anything with it once you get the flavor profile where you want it.
I snagged the last can of red kidney beans last Saturday at the store. They were low-sodium to boot. So what to do with them. Make Red Bean, Walnut and Pomegranate Pate. It’s a pretty odd combination in my book, but I was surprised at how well it worked, and it is pretty tasty.
Just let your bean flag fly and experiment to your hearts content 
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Nice @DiningDiva!
I’m going to try the sitting after cooking method. But I haven’t noticed that problem so much, just the opposite - outside done insides not. I know some experts are saying over and over that salt in the beginning doesn’t affect the cook! Okay, okay! But I can’t help wondering if the tough skins are from the salt.
I was having issues with tough skins prior to beginning to brine. Reading the Serious Eats article and then trying it myself changed my thoughts on beans and salting.
Your mileage may, of course, vary. 
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I think the salt brining which I’m going to try might be different than salting the beans while they’re boiling or simmering. Different science? Something about the salt making skins tough and slowing the inside cooking. But many have debunked that theory. FWIW @ranchogordo still advises salting towards the end when they’re soft.
Is there a way to tell which beans have thicker or thinner skins by examining them or is that just something that you have to know or look up? And if you have to look it up, is that information readily available anywhere like online or the books you mentioned? I’ll definitely do a little research if necessary but given your experience I’d certainly appreciate a recommendation.
Now that I’m interested in more than the handful of commodity beans I’ve cooked with I’m realizing there’s a lot I don’t know about beans and bean types.
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This bean guide from Serious Eats is really good. It explains what beans are and then highlights some of the more popular beans and legumes.
The Rancho Gordo website has dedicated information ech of the beans it offers and is a good resource for information and recipes. Some of the descriptions will indicate if the bean is thick or thin skinned. Here is an example of a description of a thin skinned bean. Here’s an example of a thick skinned bean . You can also take a clue from some descriptions. If they use words like big and beefy, the bean will often, but not always, have a thick skin.
Sometimes the look and feel of the bean will give you an idea as to whether or not it’s going to be thick or thin skinned. It’s been my experience that many of the white beans I get through the RG bean club tend to have a thinner skin, cook quickly, are mild and quite versatile. Many of the darker colored beans seem to have tougher skins and take longer to cook.
There are always exceptions. In the winter shipment we got a new bean called Caballero, a roundish white bean from Peru. When people began cooking it and posting about it in the RG Bean Club Facebook group there were a lot of complaints about uneven cooking and tough skin. When I made them, I brined for 24 hours, salted from the beginning of cooking and hard boiled for 20 minutes. It took those suckers 2 HOURS to get soft but the skins were still resistent to the bite. I let them cool in the bean liquor for 3 or 4 hours which did soften them up. In the end they turned out to be a really tasty bean but you had to treat them very agressively for a white bean. The alubia blancas are fabulous. You don’t have to be nearly as abusive to the bean as the Caballeros but they hold up really well to most applications.
Once you start playing around with heirloom beans you don’t want to go back to commodity beans. But it does require that you be willing to experiment and play with your food a bit to find out what works for you and your kitchen situation and what doesn’t.
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Hot damn, this information is dynamite, thank you so much!
You guys should have seen me cooking Royal Corona beans this weekend. I had no idea what was going on and that they were going to come out of their skin. I’m loving every second, learning more about beans and cooking methods.
Thanks for all the info @DiningDiva @WireMonkey @TheCookie
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I’ve always been told . If you blow on a bean to see if it’s done the skin will peel back and look like a nun’s cap .
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I’ve not heard that before. I’m cooking beans late this week. Hopefully, I can remember and try this test.
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Royal Coronas aren’t my favorites, but they not come out of their skins before. How were they and what did you do with them.
