Why buying dried beans instead of canned saves money
Canned beans are convenient. Dried beans are cheap. The gap between the two is some forward planning and fairly little effort.
Cooking beans at home instead of buying them in cans greatly reduces cost.
Here is the math for dry black beans: 1lb of dry beans = 3 540ml cans of beans. The pound of store-brand dried beans costs $1.48 today, compared to $4.37 for the 3 store-brand cans. That makes the canned beans almost 3 times more expensive than the dried ones.
Cooking beans is fairly simple. Soak them overnight covered in cold water. Drain, rinse, cover with fresh water and bring them to a rolling boil for at least 10 minutes, then simmer for 45 to 60 minutes until tender. Soaking is optional, but the rolling boil is essential to kill harmful lectins present in beans. If pressed for time, the beans can be finished in a slow-cooker, after the initial boil.
A big batch of cooked beans can be divided into smaller portions and frozen, to get the convenience of canned beans at a fraction of the cost.
Switching from dried to canned beans could save a significant amount of money each year. However, Canadians on average eat less than 2 pounds of beans per year per person! That means that the potential of saving money is huge when households start planning more meals around beans and other pulses.
By comparison, Mexicans eat 17 pounds of beans per person per year, while people in some African countries eat up to 80 pounds!
