1

I put chickpeas in cold water last night and let them soak overnight, at room temperature, about 14-16 hours total. Today when I took the cover off, there was white foam on top of the water. I dumped the beans in a colander and got a whiff of a really strong, foul odor, like sour milk or a strong cheese. I know beans can sometimes smell funky, but this was something else.

The beans themselves looked fine and normal, but it took a lot of rinsing to get rid of that bad smell. Is this normal? I rarely soak my beans and I don't think I've ever soaked chick peas, so I haven't encountered this before.

This might be important: I did not rinse them before soaking. I just put them in a pot, filled it with cold water, and set it on the counter to soak. Could that be the reason they smelled so bad after the soak? Are they OK to eat? Or should I throw them out and start over with different chick peas? Thanks.

Bastette
  • 11
  • 1
  • Was it a whiff or a staying smell? – Captain Giraffe Sep 26 '19 at 00:20
  • That's not normal. Was the smell more like ammonia or more like alcohol? You're saying spoiled milk, which makes me think ammonia. – FuzzyChef Sep 26 '19 at 00:29
  • It didn't smell like ammonia. More like sour milk, strong cheese, vomit. – Bastette Sep 26 '19 at 00:33
  • Captain Giraffe - It was a staying smell. After I rinsed the beans for about 10 minutes, the smell diminished. I washed out the pot thoroughly and put the rinsed beans and fresh water in the pot, and started it cooking. It's been simmering for about an hour and I can smell that same sour-milk smell, though not quite as strong. I'm leaning toward getting rid of them. – Bastette Sep 26 '19 at 00:35
  • See the linked duplicate: you are following an unsafe practice, and in this case, you actually had bacterial growth (which doesn't happen every time when you do something unsafe). Notice that shelf stable foods are only shelf stable in the state you buy them - if you do something to them like mix them with something else (e.g. beans with water), or open a sealed packaging, their category changes to something else - and that something else is by default "needs refrigeration" unless you have a good reason to know that's not the case. – rumtscho Sep 26 '19 at 11:53
  • @rumtscho not with you here. Dried beans are normally soaked at room temperature overnight. It's a standard cooking technique. I also disagree that this question is a duplicate; it's pretty specifically about chickpeas, and follows a standard cooking technique. Heck, I'm about to put chickpeas out to soak overnight tonight for a recipe tommorrow. – FuzzyChef Sep 27 '19 at 18:13
  • @Bastette since I can't answer this: chickpeas are for some reason fairly vulnerable to contamination, which is why processors normally heat-dry them instead of just air-drying them like other beans (which can create a different cooking problem). My first thought is that yours were not processed properly, and as a result are contaminated. You can test this by soaking some more from the same bag, after rinsing them. – FuzzyChef Sep 27 '19 at 18:15
  • @FuzzyChef there are many traditional techniques which are widespread, rarely lead to noticeable bacterial growth, and are nevertheless unsafe. For example, I don't keep my fridge at below 4C (and many Europeans don't do it either). Still, when obvious spoilage does occur, food safety rules don't look further into the reason than to point out that this can happen when you don't follow them. By the way, you can soak your beans in the fridge, the effect is the same as when soaking at room temperature. – rumtscho Sep 27 '19 at 18:18
  • 1
    Thanks everyone for your replies. (Am I allowed to thank people for their help? ) I ended up dumping everything out and buying canned chickpeas. In the future I will buy dried ones, but not before I tell the store that the beans they were selling in their bulk section were contaminated. @FuzzyChef - I read the other post that this one is supposed to be a duplicate of, and I don't think the information in that post adequately addressed my issue, which as you say, is much more specific. Interesting about the processing. I'll wash dried chickpeas very carefully from now on, before soaking! – Bastette Sep 29 '19 at 06:12

0 Answers0