Are Dried Beans Cheaper Than Canned? Yes, the Gap Is Large
I have now told you twice that dried beans would save you money, once in the cabbage skillet and once in the rice and beans, without ever showing the arithmetic. That is the kind of unchecked claim I got wrong about whole chickens, so here it is properly.
The short answer: dried beans are much cheaper than canned, the gap is bigger than the one I found for baking your own bread, and unlike the bread case the energy cost barely dents it.
The arithmetic
A pound of dried beans yields roughly six cups cooked. A standard 15.5 ounce can gives you about a cup and a half drained. So one pound of dried is about four cans.
| Cost | Cost per cooked cup | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 lb dried beans | $2.00 | $0.33 |
| 4 cans, drained | $5.20 | $0.87 |
Canned beans cost about two and a half times as much per cup. Buying dried saves roughly $3.20 every time you cook a pound.
Beans are one of the affordable staples worth keeping on hand when you build a budget pantry. See How to Stock a Pantry on a Budget
Both figures are my estimates. BLS does not publish an average price series for beans in either format, which is why this article has no federal number in it. Check your own shelf, because bulk bins and store brands move these numbers a lot.
The energy, which turns out not to matter
When I costed the no-knead bread, the oven added about 30 cents to a 96 cent loaf, nearly a third of the total. I expected something similar here.
It is not similar. A pound of soaked beans simmers for about an hour on a low burner. Simmering cycles well below a burner’s rated draw, so call it 0.5 to 0.9 kilowatt-hours. At 17 cents per kilowatt-hour that is 9 to 15 cents.
Take the middle and the net saving is about $3.08 a pound.
The difference between this and the bread case is straightforward. An oven heats a large insulated box to 450°F and holds it there. A pot of beans heats about two litres of water to just under boiling and keeps it there. One of those is a much smaller job.
These are estimates, not measurements, and your rate and your stove will move them. The conclusion survives a wide margin of error, which is the useful thing about a gap this size.
The time, which does matter
Here is the part every frugal article skips.
Active time is about ten minutes. Put beans in water before bed. Drain them the next day, cover with fresh water, put the pot on. Come back in an hour. Salt near the end.
Elapsed time is about twelve hours, almost all of it the soak, during which you are asleep.
So the trade is roughly $3.08 for ten minutes of attention, plus remembering the night before. As an hourly rate that is excellent. As a lifestyle it fails on exactly the nights you did not think ahead, which is most nights for most people.
That is the real reason cans exist, and it is a legitimate reason. You are not buying beans, you are buying the fact that you did not have to decide about beans yesterday.
The move that gets you both
Cook the whole pound at once and freeze it in portions.
A pound of dried beans makes about six cups. Cook them, cool them, divide into can-sized portions of about a cup and a half, and freeze them flat in bags with a little of their cooking liquid. They keep for months and thaw in a bowl of water in fifteen minutes, or go straight into a soup frozen.
You have then paid dried prices and bought canned convenience, at the cost of one hour on a Sunday.
This is the single highest-return kitchen habit on this site, and I say that as someone who keeps finding that the frugal advice does not hold up. This one does, by a factor of two and a half.
Two things cans are actually better at
The liquid. Aquafaba, the starchy liquid in a can of chickpeas, whips like egg white and does things home-cooked bean liquid does not do as reliably. If you are using it for that, buy the can.
Consistency. A can is the same every time. Dried beans vary by age, and old beans can refuse to soften no matter how long you cook them. If a bag has been in the cupboard for two years, that is where your failed batch came from, not your technique.
What to check on your own shelf
Divide the price of the bag by six to get your cost per cooked cup. Divide the price of a can by 1.5 to get theirs. Compare those two numbers, not the package prices.
If your store sells beans from a bulk bin, the gap is usually wider still. If you only ever find small bags of dried beans at premium prices, it may be narrower than mine. Either way it takes thirty seconds and it is the only comparison that means anything.
I expected to write a hedged article here, because the last three times I checked a piece of received frugal wisdom it did not survive. This one does. Buy the bag.
