Don't soak your dried beans

I was under the assumption that uncooked beans contain enzyme inhibitors (which make digestion more difficult), and germinating the beans before cooking reduces the effectiveness of these inhibitors.

This article isn't nearly as scientific as I hoped it would be.

For larger beans like kidneys, I disagree. But for split lentils, various dals, navy beans, etc, you can get away with not soaking them. One thing I have found (and Cooks Illustrated concurs) is that you should salt both the soaking water and the cooking water.

Sorry I didn't include more details. I change the water often, and sometimes use the boil and soak method. Sometimes I change the water after they've started to cook, especially if there is a lot of foam. All of my experiences indicate this decreases flatulence. It is true that long soaking periods can decrease flavor and produce a non-optimal texture.

I find that canned beans and beans from certain restaurants do produce more gas for me.

The article does go on to say that the boil and soak method effectively reduces gas producing sugars. It would be nice if this was highlighted more in the exposition and main claims of the article. Rather, it makes it sound like all soaking is unnecessary.

As far as baking soda, my friend in Australia was having a very difficult time getting beans to soften due to the properties of the local water and was very pleased at the results when I suggested using baking soda. I don't do this myself, as it is said to decrease certain nutrients.

I am genuinely curious, why is this post on Hackernews' front page? Yes I know this type of comment is typically frowned upon (and will happily accept the downvotes), but seriously--a story about cooking beans with some vague science and anecdotes?

I also read "amateur" all over the article. In Brazil people have been cooking beans for centuries and honestly I cannot even understand his doubts or questions. In the past we used to soak beans overnight just because otherwise they would take ages to cook in regular pots (and some people still do that when they only have regular pots to cook with). But that was it, just to speed things up. No (real) difference in flavor, digestion etc.

Nearly every house in Brazil has a pressure cooker. Even in favelas everybody has one. I would say 90% of them were bought just to cook beans every other day. The basic brazilian way is to simply cook the beans in the pressure cooker with nothing else but water. Then we it reaches the biting point you want (between 20 and 40 minutes, depending on the beans) you take a big spoon of that, smash it in another pan with garlic and some chopped onions and oil and then put it back into the cooker, plus salt to taste. And that is it. Nothing more.

If the whole soaking or cooking debate was real, specially considering the gas issue he mentions, I think Brazil would be the biggest polluter of methane in the world by the way.

EDIT: grammar