Benefits

Since the protein amount of dried beans is high, tiny stomach of your little gourmet will not be ready to digest dried beans at early months. Dried beans is very rich in protein and anorganic salts and helps bones to grow stronger.

Keep in mind

If you serve dried beans with a whole grain like brown rice or whole wheat bread, you will make sure that your baby is provided with all dietary protein intake for that day.

Vegetable protein sources like dried beans don't contain essential amino acids that animal protein (like meat) does. For this reason, if you feed your baby dried beans with whole grains, you make sure that your baby intakes all amino acids at once.

Warning

Let's not forget that dried beans cause gas problems. So you need to wait until your digestive system is fully ready for this. Click here for methods to overcome gas problems.

Dried beans with meat is a nutritious and delicious menu but your baby may have difficulty in chewing the meat. If you want you can prepare it with mince or you may try mashed dried bean and sweet dried bean recipes. For dried bean recipes prepared by Gurme Bebek, click here

Tips

If you soak dried beans and other legumes overnight, you may shorten the cooking time next day. But you should wash it before you soak it. Dried beans will be ready to cook 6-8 hours after soaking. Add enough water to cover the beans and cook it.

Just like other legumes, you must soak dried beans at least for 6 hours and clear off the bubbles on top while cooking. This will lower the risk of gas problems. When you soak the legumes, oligosaccharides responsible for gas will be eliminated. So when cooking legume, don't use the water you used to soak the legumes. Dispose the water used for soaking and wash the legumes with plenty of water. Then you may start cooking.

When cooking, the ratio should be 3 glasses of water to 1 glass of dry food. However if you did not soak the legume overnight, you can adjust the ratio as 1 to 4 or 1 to 5.
 
Nutritional value per 1 cup of boiled dried beans;
 
Protein     44.8 g  
Vitamin A 14.7 IU
Vitamin C 8.3 mg
Calcium 359 mg
Iron 17.2 mg
Magnesium 294 mg
Phosphor 745 mg                                                   
Potassium      2742mg   
Sodium     20.2 mg