On Sat, 19 Apr 2008 23:49:27 -0400, Anthony Ferrante
> wrote:

>I am going to make some bean soup in my crockpot soon. This will be
>the first time for me.

Beans in a crock pot is a very tricky thing to cook. The number one
rule of crock pot cooking is to leave the lid ON for the entire time
of cooking. Every time you remove the lid, you loose about 30
minuties of cooking time. It takes that long for the crockpot to
recover the heat loss. This leads to the problem.

Beans will adsorb this liquid and expand. Getting the correct amount
of water and beans for the pot size can be tricky. I have had the
beans swell and move the lid off...and I have had the beans adsorb all
the liquid and the pot cooks dry. Both scenarios are disaster.

On the bag of beans will be directions for "quick soak". This
method works very good. I would use this method and cook in a
"normal" stock pot twice the volume of the beans being cooked. Great
Northerns are my favorite.