Beans in Slow Cooker: a toxin no-no?

[Annie Mac]

I have been cooking my beans in a slow cooker for years, mostly black and pinto. This morning, though, I decided to use up the rest of the kidney beans. While searching for a suitable recipe online, I found that there is a toxin in beans, esp red ones like kidney beans that can actually be increased by slow cooking, even if they are fully cooked. On Wiki, it says that as little as 5 beans is enough to cause illness. They recommend boiling for 10 minutes and cooking conventionally (I don't know if pressure cooking is OK). Did everyone know this but me? I can't recall ever having been sick after eating slow-cooked beans, but I don't know, maybe I attributed it to something else.

Non-red beans are still OK, right?

[alia]

I had never heard this and have never gotten sick from red beans that I can remember.

From reading the wiki, it sounds like cooking only on low in a slow cooker might be a problem, but many slow cooker recipies do say to cook on high for a while, then simmer for the rest of the cooking time...and on high, you -should- see some boiling going on, which sounds like it would take care of the problematic lectins.

Here's an exerpt from http://www.foodreference.com/html/ar...poisoning.html

"Several outbreaks have been associated with "slow cookers" or crock pots, or in casseroles which had not reached a high enough internal temperature to destroy the glycoprotein lectin. It has been shown that heating to 80 degrees C. may potentiate the toxicity five-fold, so that these beans are more toxic than if eaten raw. In studies of casseroles cooked in slow cookers, internal temperatures often did not exceed 75 degrees C.."

Take-home? Red beans are still okay... if prepped properly (which is true for lots of foods).

[mamadelbosque]

I've never heard this and I've been cooking beans in a crockpot for YEARS... so has my mom. We start them on high for the first couple hours though, and then turn down to low once they've started to coook (so probably like 3-6 hours on high followed by 1-20 hours on low...), depending on how soft we want them.