Unpopular opinion: dry beans are not worth the savings for a 2 person household
I saw a post in a Facebook group where someone claimed you can feed a family of four for $40 a week if you cook dry beans from scratch, and I did the math for my own situation in Tucson. Between the soaking, the 90 minutes of simmering, and tossing out the ones that stay hard, I figured I save maybe $1.20 per meal over canned, which works out to under $4 a month for two people. Am I missing something, or is the real money saver here just planning meals and eating leftovers instead of chasing pennies on beans?
The part about "tossing out the ones that stay hard" is doing way more work in your math than you probably realize. Old beans never soften no matter how long you cook them, and if you bought them from a bulk bin that's been sitting there since who knows when, you can lose a third of the pot to that. So you're not just saving $1.20 a meal, you're also gambling on whether the batch even works. The other thing nobody brings up is the energy cost. Ninety minutes of simmering on an electric stove in an Arizona summer means your AC is fighting that heat the whole time, which eats a chunk of the savings right there. Your leftover plan is honestly the better play.