I saw the title of this post and got really excited because I make bean soup in my slow cooker all the time and thought someone was posting a recipe! We LOVE bean soup. I make a lot and freeze a lot for later.


But, alas, my beans come from cans, so I'm of no value to you whatsoever. :o

I stopped soaking my beans and started using canned beans for bean soup. So much easier. And I didn't have to worry about the beans being hard or forgetting to soak the beans before I went to bed.

I pulled my jar out from the freezer and plan on this for tomorrow's lunch. Yum.

I have a seven quart crock pot that I use for bean soups. I wash and sort 2 cups of beans of whatever variety, add cold water to cover to twice the depth of the beans, Turn the crock pot on high, and go to bed. When I get up in the morning, I add meat, veggies, seasonings, whatever, and turn the heat down to low. Dinner is done when we are ready to eat. I always make cornbread to go with beans (I think it is a law that you must have cornbread with beans, lol) because the baking soda in the cornbread helps prevent "gas" problems. Try it, it works.

I had this happen with split peas. I never realized that beans or legumes could get old, but they do. I cooked the split peas for two days before I gave up. Usually my split pea soup cooks in a couple of hours, not a couple of days. LOL.

Did you salt them. If so, then there's your problem. The beans need to start getting a little soft before adding salt or they'll never cook right. Also, I put a bay leaf or two in the pot, helps cut down with gas in the tummy

never tried in crock ppot i do on top of stove

I'm not asking for advise - just wanted to share my experience this weekend. Now I have always just washed my beans, put in crock pot along with salt and seasoning - cooked on high about 2 hours, turn on low and go to bed and they're done in the morning. Saturday evening I put on some white beans in my InstantPot and pressured for 40 minutes. Most of the beans were done but I could tell when stirring that some were not. So I used the crock pot setting and cooked them for ANOTHER 4 hours. Still not ALL done. Left them cooking over night. This was for pot luck at church otherwise I would have stopped then and warned my family to spit out the hard ones. When I got to church Sunday someone had a pot of pinto beans on the stove cooking. Turns out my friend was having the same trouble with her beans except none of her beans were soft. She had soaked them 5 hours, then in crock pot over night and still not done. By the way they did get done before dinner. My beans came from a new bag of beans so if they were old it they were old when I brought them home from the store. I'm 80 and have never had an experience like that before. Can't imagine how only a few of the beans didn't get soft and the rest did. LOL

Misseva, I am glad that I am not the only one who has had that problem. It is curious. I wonder how we can get an answer from an expert in the bean field on why this happens.

I use canned beans whenever I just need a small amount but always make sure to rinse them well since this washes away some of the sodium.