Hey there, apologies if this isn't the right place, I usually don't go online to find cooking info, but I have a bit of an issue right now and I'd like to avoid throwing out $40 dollars worth of food if possible. I'm having an issue similar to an old thread found here. In short I cooked chili, but even after the recommended cook time the beans aren't soft. The chili pack that I bought was this one found here , and while I was pretty sure you should soak beans, the instructions stated that as an optional possibility, and was unfortunately packaged in a way that it was difficult to get the beans out without losing all the spices, so I cooked it as per the directions without soaking.

After almost 7 hours (over 2 days) some of the beans are still pretty firm, something like a soft peanut. They haven't shown substantial improvement in softening over the last 3 hours of cooking, and I really am unsure what to do. I'd would really like to avoid throwing it out, but I understand uncooked beans can be poisonous (well food poison) and I already have serious digestion issues so I'd rather not chance it.

Any help is appreciated, thank you!