How to Peel beans using a food processor

I have wanted to write this for a few weeks now, but I was waiting for one more ingenious idea to use with the food processor, to give it a truly robust post. I waited and waited for something to occur to me, and my thoughts manifested last weekend. It is good that I am writing this now and it also comes from a place of deep reasoning. First of all, shout out to Atoke, who is not feeling too well at the moment. Getting through to you by phone is like reaching the head of the FBI, so I will just send you cyber hugs from here. I hope you feel better soon.

Atoke went deep for her Monday Morning Banter and it was quite surprising to read the perspective of women on why they wanted children or not. Continuing the conversation with Isio Wanogho my crazy hot Delta sister on why you want to get married. Again, very interesting read, but the comments went on and on ad nauseam to be honest. One comment kinda switched something in me, when a reader wrote that men have nothing to gain in marriage. I wanted to get up right there and bitch slap him with a chair. Lol. Are you kidding me? REALLY!!!!!!! I won’t go into the total misconception about that comment, but highlight on what I consider a failing with Nigerian women and cooking and if in truth the men appreciate or even understand our self inflicted stress. Ladies, MUST we slave in the kitchen, before we feel accomplished as cooks? Why do we seem to loooooooove stressful cooking, or could be unwillingness to accept change? Truly, do you earn your stripes as a woman by sweating it out while the Mr lounges on the sofa, and you run though your years taking the path of the most resistance. If I hear that African woman crap, I am going to give you that bitch slapping I have reserved for Mr “Iyke”. Looooooool.

I love to cook, I intend to do it for a living at some point, but I am the first to admit that it is draining. So, when I find an alternative to doing anything quicker, I am the first on the queue. When The Almighty was sharing physical strength, I must have been sleeping for sure. Mental is where my strength lies, I have come to accept that. If money will buy the services of someone/something to do the energy-consuming bit, I am prepared to work hard to earn that freedom. Freedom to be that 2014 Nigerian cook lies in a Food Processor. It is one of the best things you can have in your kitchen, hands down. It is even more amazing to me when I discover new ways it can relieve what can sometimes be outright drudgery in our cooking. I hope the day will come when a food processor will become the norm in our kitchens the way a blender is now. Kenwood, I hope you guys are listening. Looool

More ways to love your food processor

1. You can peel Beans in a food Processor in a fraction, and I mean a fraction of the time it takes to do it in a blender. If you think a blender is faster than hand peeling, a food processor is like comparing Usain Bolt to Mo Farah. I peeled 2kg worth of beans in a food processor in under 7 minutes in 3 cycles (I timed it). It gets better. Not only is it faster, it is freaking awesome i.e. NO BREAKING OF THE BEANS. I repeat. NO BREAKING OF THE BEANS. Not a single one. If you want to try peeling beans in a blender, click HERE for the procedure.

I had a very large order of Moin Moin. I had accepted the order and it didn’t really sink in what I just did until I poured out 2kg worth of beans into a bowl.  I looked at my blender and groaned. The small portions you need to peel in a blender would literally take forever, it would almost negate the so-called quick method. Then it occurred to me to use a food processor. I was sure I had read it somewhere, but when you have a ton of Moin Moin to make, alongside 5 other dishes, all in one weekend, believe me, cracking your brain for where you saw something doesn’t come top of your priorities. It worked people. Dancing on the ceiling, clapping my hands in the air. Here’s how:

1. Soak the beans in water for under five minutes and empty into a food processor.

2. Assemble the food processor and attach the knife blade

3. Drain all the water from the beans to prevent it from over soaking and pour into the food processor bowl. I had a lot of beans to peel, so I went as close to the maximum mark as I could. No time or patience to try a little bit at a time, the idea of using a food processor was to peel a large volume in one go. It was trial and error for me, and it worked. I only started taking pictures after my first try. As you can see picture below.

4. Add water and stop at the maximum mark. As you can see from the picture below, I didn’t need to add that much water before I reached the maximum mark.

another shot

5. Cover the food processor bowl, now it is time to fiddle with the dial

Recanting my experience – I tried to use the pulse button and it didn’t give me the result I was expecting. I guess it was because of the ratio of the volume of the beans to water. Then I thought, oh well, I will set it to maximum briefly and repeat the process. As you can see from the picture below, the engine was at high-speed. Of course, water was spurting out a bit, that was because, even though water was poured to max, the power of the rotating blade set to max, would raise the contents of the bowl past the maximum mark. For you, it might be best to get slightly more than 3 quarter way full.

6. After 3 cycles on max briefly, Ta dah!!!! All that beans peeled in one go. Now, imagine how long it would have taken you to do that in a blender.

7. Pour out the skinned beans into a big bowl.

Decant the sins that float to the top. Repeat the process, till you have gotten rid of the skins

8. I had to scoop out a handful to show you. I can factually say 99.9% of the beans had their skin off, and the best part, none was broken.

The “science”, or should I say physics, oh well, Physics is a science. Lol. Anyways, I figured out that filling the food processor with beans and just little water, means the bean seeds are so tightly packed together, thereby creating a very strong frictional or is it centrifugal force (barely managed to pass physics) between the bean seeds collectively, such that they rub against each other at high-speed, shedding the skins. Think about it, when you peel beans by hand, you are in essence packing the bean seeds tightly between your palms and rubbing them together.

I always do my fact check before I post anything on the blog. I said earlier, that I had seen it somewhere. I remembered reading what Shakirat wrote on her blog post about peeling beans. It went thus, “I hope to try the food processor method next time I peel beans”. This was written in 2012, but I remember I had seen it months ago but without pictures. To read the comments, with her readers saying the would try the food processor, and some stating that they have been using the blender for the past 3 years, I thought wow. I only found out last year, and even at that, lots of people kept coming out saying they had been doing so for the past 10 years, one as far back as 20 years. My head was spinning. Why, in the world wasn’t this news spread on the hilltops or like wild-fire? Thank goodness for the internet and the advent of food blogs. Nigerian cooks, let us save ourselves, please.

Think of all the lovely Akara, Moin Moin, Ekuru, Gbegiri, you can make with this process. Rather than use a blender multiple times, just use your food processor once, or twice as the case may be. If you have not had that much luck with a blender, I believe you should nail the food processor method on your first try.

Please let me know how it goes. If you have been looking for one more thing to convince you to getting yourself a food processor, well here’s one more. If you love Ewa Aganyin, you are about to dance when you read the next post. Better still, make Bros buy it for you, you have been slaving away in the kitchen for ages, he owes you. Looooool. How to make Ewa Aganyin using a food processor. Click HERE