If you were to disregard basic fire safety and cook the beans start to finish in the oven overnight, all you’d do is combine all the ingredients in a Dutch oven, cover it, and bake it for hours upon hours upon hours. Toward the end, if they got too dry, you’d need to add a splash or two of boiling water, but otherwise, that’s about it. Just remember: I’m not officially recommending this, so if you burn your house down, don’t come looking for me.
The safer route is one that allows you to monitor the cooking process throughout.
Step 1: Soak Beans in Salted Water
Kenji recently tested bean-soaking and -cooking methods and found that he got the best, most consistent, most evenly cooked results by soaking the beans overnight in water with one tablespoon of kosher salt per quart (about 15 grams per liter). So that’s what we’re doing here. Once the presoak is done, drain them well, rinse them with fresh water, and add them to a pot.
