Cheap Tuesdays - Convenience Vegetarian

Beans, chickpeas and lentils are all nutritious and cheap but take too long to cook to be convenient! The amount of preparation and cooking time involved in vegetarian cooking was probably the biggest hurdle when we first transitioned from mostly meat-based meals. Tinned versions are readily available and cheap, but nowhere near as cheap (or nutritious) as the real thing and, using the brilliance of your slowcooker and freezer, can be just as little effort to use:

Wash them – I do this by pouring the beans, lentils or chickpeas into a strainer and, using a bowl of similar size, fill with water to wash them around in while picking out any dodgy ones so it’s easy to drain them a couple of times. I often leave them to soak in the last lot of water for a bit while I try and catch the wild natives who are supposed to be getting ready for school, but this certainly isn’t a necessary step J
Cook them – Chuck them into the slow cooker pot, add water until the legumes come up to 1/2-1/3 of the water line. If you’re not confident make it 1/3, because you can just drain any excess water when they’re done anyway. Guide to cooking times…
Green/Brown Lentils: Only take about 3 or so hours on low, but I mostly leave them on all day because I’m lazy.
Chickpeas: Low 6-8 hours, again I usually just leave them on all day.
Kidney Beans: Auto 8-12 hours. You could pre-soak them overnight so you don’t have to cook them for so long or to use the low setting but, as you may have guessed, I’m too lazy to do this!
Divide & Freeze them – Turn your cooker off, take the lid off to let it cool for a while (I often do this before I eat dinner and come back once the kid’s night time routine is done). Then I use this strainer-spoon-thing that probably has a real name (but we’re close friends so we use nicknames) to put them into individual containers. I use 1L ones, because that’s what I used to freeze our mince and chicken in, but usually only fill them 2/3 full.
Use them – You can now use them instead of tinned versions running them under some warm water (or getting them out to defrost in the morning), or just chuck them into a meal you are cooking like you would use frozen vegetables. I’ll be adding recipes as I can – the tricky bit is getting a photo of the meals before they’re eaten!

I usually do about 5 (uncooked) cups worth of lentils or chickpeas at a time, which will last us about 6 weeks. Kidney beans we don’t use as often so I only do 3 or 4 cups and that lasts us closer to 2 months.