Slow Cooker Beans to Freeze

Awhile ago on the pregnancy forum I frequent, someone posted about how they cooked beans in their slow cooker to freeze and store to use in other recipes. What a great idea! Anytime I can eliminate cans and the BPA they leach into food I'm a happy camper. Plus beans are very healthy and seriously cheap and can help stretch your food budget. I planned to make chili tonight so I started the beans this afternoon and now I have a bunch of freshly cooked kidney beans ready to use. I believe the recipe is from the Wildly Affordable Organic book. Here it is:

Boil 12 cups of water (10 cups for lentils) add to the slow cooker with 2 lbs rinsed and sorted dried beans and 1 Tbsp salt. For split peas, lentils, or black-eyed peas, cook 1 hour 15 minutes. For black beans, chickpeas, kidney beans, and pinto beans cook 3.5 hours all on high setting. If you use cold water instead of boiled, the cooking time increases to 6-7/5 hours. Cool, then use or freeze the beans. Easy as pie!

The woman who posted this used ball canning jars to freeze the beans but I think I'll use smaller freezer baggies in 1 or 2 cup portions. I only had a 16 oz bag of kidney beans, so I used 6 cups of boiled water and they were tender around 2 hours later. Next time I do half the recipe I think I'll start checking for tenderness around 1.5 hours of cooking. I love this method and am excited to fill my freezer with ready to use, inexpensive, BPA-free beans!