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If you're using hard water or beans damaged by age or storage, add 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda per pound of dried beans to the soaking water. If you empty the soaking water and use fresh water to cook the beans, replace the baking soda.

The tenderness that baking soda offers comes with a cost, a sacrifice of both taste and nutrition, according to the Culinary Institute of America. If too much baking soda is used, the beans can taste of soap, so measure carefully. Baking soda also damages thiamine, a B complex vitamin.

Instead of adding baking soda to the beans, try boiling then freezing them.

For perfect cut-out cookies, you’d use baking powder because it allows the dough to rise but doesn’t make your proud gingerbread man look like he had a close encounter with a car tire. But for chocolate chip cookies, you’d use baking soda because it allows the dough to spread, and you get thinner, crisp edges with a tender center. (Now I’m craving cookies!)