Do you sort your beans before cooking?

Yes. I do sort them when I am cooking with dry beans. I was taught to do the same thing as you were.

You are right, as sometimes there can be small rocks or pieces of gravel in with the beans, and that would be the last thing that you would want to bite down on when eating your beans.

I wash them in a colander and stir them around a bit looking for rocks and remove any that float. But there's a good chance I could miss a rock. On the other hand, I've never found one.

Yes,I always sort dried beans and thoroughly wash them before cooking. I usually find little stones and even an occasionally small clump of dirt, etc. that I don't want to end up in my cooked beans. It would be too easy to chip a tooth on one of those little pebbles. My family was formerly from the South but I'm a native Californian, so it isn't just a Missouri thing.

Thanks, I knew that I wasn't the only one that sorted beans. My sister-in-law said that she had never heard of doing this with beans.

I cooked beans last night and I did find a small piece of gravel.

We also check the beans before cooking... I was born in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the women always called it "looking the beans". Even though I moved away as a child, my Mom said it and it always stuck with me. So I always "look my beans"... don't want to break a tooth on something that's not supposed to be in there!

i wash them in a bowl and change the water a few times and in some instances let them soak. i do run my hands through the beans several times to find any stones, but i RARELY find any. i dont pour the beans onto a counter.

i always sort them by pouring them out on a rimmed cookie sheet, and culling out the bad ones, rocks etc..

Dry beans yes I do sort them because you can find many unwanted items in them.