Beans are boring because you cooked them in plain water

Put a tablespoon of kosher salt in a quart of water tonight and dump a pound of dried beans in it. That's the whole first move. In the morning they'll be plump, seasoned through, and their skins won't shred the second the pot gets going.

The old wisdom said salt early makes beans tough. It's wrong, and it's been wrong for a long time. Salt in the soaking water swaps out some of the calcium and magnesium in the skins, which makes those skins softer and less likely to blow open. The bean gets seasoned from the inside instead of wearing salt on the outside like a coat. If you've only ever salted at the end and wondered why your beans taste like beans-flavored nothing with a salty broth around them, that's why.

Use Diamond Crystal if you've got it. Morton kosher is denser, so a tablespoon of it is noticeably saltier. Cut it to about two teaspoons and you're in the same neighborhood.

The beans that never soften are just old

You did everything right and after three hours they're still chalky. That's not your technique. That's a bag of beans that's been on a shelf for four years, losing moisture and setting up its own cell walls until nothing short of a pressure cooker will save it.

Dried beans don't spoil, but they age. Buy from a store that moves volume, or from one of the small outfits that actually prints a harvest year on the bag. If a bag looks dusty and the beans rattle like gravel, pass.

Hard water makes it worse. If your tap water leaves white crust on the kettle, a quarter teaspoon of baking soda per pound of beans in the cooking water will help them break down. Any more than that and you get a soapy taste and a pot of mush. It's a rescue, not a routine.

Cook them at one lazy bubble

A hard boil is what shreds the skins and turns the pot cloudy. You want the surface to break maybe once every second or two, somewhere in the range where the water shivers more than it rolls. On most home burners that's the lowest setting with the lid cracked, or 325°F in the oven with the lid on, which is easier because the oven doesn't drift.

Now season the liquid like you'd season a soup, because that's what you're making. Half an onion, skin on. A head of garlic cut across the equator. Two bay leaves. A dried chile if you like heat. A parmesan rind, a smoked ham hock, a couple of strips of bacon, or three tablespoons of olive oil if you're keeping it meatless. Fat in the pot from the start is the difference between a bean that tastes lean and a bean that tastes rich.

Water should cover by about two inches. Too much and you dilute everything you just built.

And test five beans, not one. There's always one traitor in the pot that's soft while the rest are chalky. When five in a row are creamy all the way to the center with no grit, you're done.

The liquid is the sauce. Stop pouring it out.

The best thing in the pot is the starchy, seasoned broth, and most people send it down the drain and then wonder why their beans need a sauce. If it's thin, pull the lid and simmer it down for fifteen minutes. If you want it thicker fast, scoop out a cup of beans, mash them with a fork, and stir them back in. That's it. No cornstarch, no cream.

Store beans in their liquid too. They'll keep about five days in the fridge and they'll taste better on day two than day one. Freeze them in the liquid as well, in a quart container with an inch of headspace.

Lentils play by different rules

Don't soak them. Don't cook them past the timer and expect anything but paste.

Brown and green lentils go from firm to falling apart in about a five-minute window, usually somewhere around 20 to 25 minutes of simmering. Start tasting at 18. French green lentils, the small dark ones, hold their shape much better and are worth the extra dollar when you want a salad instead of a puree. Red and yellow lentils dissolve completely, which is the point when you're making dal and a disaster when you wanted a side dish.

Acid keeps lentils firm. That's useful and it's also the classic mistake. Dump in tomatoes or vinegar at the start and you'll be simmering forever, cursing the bag. Cook them plain in salted water with a bay leaf, drain when they're where you want them, and add the tomato, the lemon, the mustard, the vinegar after. Warm lentils absorb dressing. Cold ones just wear it.

Cook grains like pasta and stop measuring water

Farro, barley, wheat berries, brown rice, wild rice. All of them come out better boiled in a big pot of well-salted water and drained than they do steamed in a precisely measured ratio. Ratios are how you get a gummy bottom layer and a dry top layer in the same pot.

Salt the water like you would for pasta. Boil hard. Farro runs 20 to 30 minutes depending on whether it's pearled or whole. Barley's about 30. Wheat berries want closer to an hour and never fully soften, which is their charm. Brown rice, boiled and drained at around 25 minutes, comes out in separate grains instead of a paste.

Two things that make a real difference. Toast the dry grain in a tablespoon of oil in the pot for two minutes first, until it smells like popcorn. And when you drain, spread the grain on a sheet pan in a single layer instead of leaving it piled in the colander. Steam trapped in a pile keeps cooking the grain and turns the edges soft. Ten minutes on a sheet pan and it's cool, loose, and ready to be a salad or a fried rice or a bowl of something with an egg on it.

The finish is where most people quit

A pot of properly cooked beans still tastes flat if you serve it naked. Four things, and you rarely need all four:

• Acid. A splash of red wine vinegar or a squeeze of lemon, off the heat. This is the single biggest upgrade and it takes four seconds.
• Fat, added late. Good olive oil poured over the bowl. Butter stirred into the grains. It carries flavor to your tongue in a way that fat cooked in for two hours no longer does.
• Crunch. Toasted breadcrumbs, pepitas, fried garlic chips, crushed tortilla chips.
• Something raw and green. Chopped parsley, scallion, cilantro, a fistful of arugula wilted in by the heat of the bowl.

The other move is heat and a pan. Take a cup of cooked beans, get two tablespoons of oil or bacon fat hot in a skillet, and press them down until the edges blister and brown. Chickpeas do the same thing in a 425°F oven for 25 minutes. Suddenly the person at your table who says they don't like beans is eating them by the handful, because what they never liked was the texture, and you just changed it.

Cook a pound Sunday afternoon while you're doing something else. By Wednesday you'll have quit pretending the can was fine.