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I am making a pressure cooker stew and have frozen butter beans that I would like to add. Since I generally use dried beans, my typical process would be to soak the beans overnight, cook them separately and then add them to the stew at the end.

With the fresh beans it seems reasonable to just add the frozen beans directly to the stew after cooking the stew, then pressure cook the whole thing together for 10 minutes.

Having never cooked frozen beans before:

  1. Do fresh beans absorb a significant amount of water during cooking? If I add 1 lb of frozen beans, how much extra water should I add?
  2. I pressure cook the stew for ~45 minutes. If I added the beans at the beginning would they be mush by the end?
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I see instructions for pressure cooked frozen butter beans, which call for 4 minutes at high pressure, followed by about 10 minutes of natural pressure release. So, I would certainly add them at the end. Fresh beans (or frozen) don't absorb a lot of liquid, and you can certainly add more liquid to thin afterward.

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It worked phenomenally!

I quick-released my stew ~5 minutes earlier than usual, added the frozen beans (no extra water needed- the beans were just covered by the liquid) pressure cooked on high for 7 minutes then allowed to release naturally.

The beans were buttery but totally intact. Would recommend.

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  • Yep, use them like peas which are almost always added frozen near the end of cooking.
    – eps
    Commented Oct 11, 2021 at 13:55
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    Sweet peas can be eaten raw, so they don't really need to be cooked, just reheated. I basically just dump them in at the last second and then wait for the dish to bubble again. Beans are very starchy so they definitely needed to be pressure cooked for a few minutes (or on the bag it says to boil for 30-40 mins). Probably a similar distinction with sweet vs flint corn.
    – Tjaden Hess
    Commented Oct 11, 2021 at 14:04
  • Releasing pressure midway through and then pressurizing again seems way too fiddly; it defeats the simplicity of pressure cooking. "Throw it all in there and let the pressure sort it out".
    – Kaz
    Commented Oct 12, 2021 at 6:28
  • I don't think it was that much extra work, you just press the button to let the steam out, dump the beans in and hit start again. For context I'm using an instant pot. Possibly if you're using a stovetop pressure cooker it would be more involved.
    – Tjaden Hess
    Commented Oct 12, 2021 at 17:34

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