Are You Cooking Whole Pulses Or Legumes Without Soaking?

Due to our busy lifestyle most of us look for the quickest method to cook the food but due to this we are not cooking properly our food especially legumes/ whole pulses and hence facing lot of issues whenever we are consuming chana, rajma, lobiya, soybean etc.

Pulses such as lentils, dried beans, peas and chickpeas have been staple foods for many civilizations. Yet today, their nutritional benefits are often greatly underestimated. The reasons why pulses are underestimated have been widely discussed:

• The length of cooking time (much longer than vegetables);
• Some beans can cause flatulence because they contain oligosaccharides, a carbohydrate that is difficult to digest.
• Raw pulses contain high levels of ‘anti nutrients’ such as phytate, tannin and phenol, which can limit the body’s absorption of minerals, such as iron and zinc.
• So, this is why the need for soaking the pulses arouse.

Many pulses are soaked in water from 4 to 8 hours – a practice that will dramatically reduce their phytate content and cooking time and their propensity to cause flatulence. But ensure that you have drained off the water in which you soaked because of high levels of anti nutrients present in it. Soaking ensures that pulses can be more easily digested and their nutrients better absorbed by the body. In fact, soaking dried pulses for several hours brings them back to life, activating their enzymes. Soaking in sodium bicarbonate solutions is more effective to reduce anti-nutrients than soaking in water alone.

Do you always have to soak pulses?

No! lentils and split pulses can be cooked without soaking. However, they may well still benefit from soaking (it stops the shell from cracking and removes any impurities). In addition, soaking reduces cooking time. Lentils do not need to be soaked but it will reduce their cooking time by around half if soaked. Soaking is only required for peas (cow pea, chick pea- white and black), bengal gram, beans (kidney beans, soybeans), green moong (whole).

Most beans will need a minimum of 4 to 12 hours of soaking in fresh, cool water. Discard the soaking water because it has anti nutrients in it.

You yourself can observe if you soak pulses you will realize the foaming in the soaked water. This foam has anti nutrient which will not let other nutrients to be absorbed in our body.