How to cook beans (and other legumes)

Cooking beans and other legumes so that they are truly nutritious and easily digestible, instead of converting themselves in great clouds of gasses :), is not difficult at all, but there are some things one simply has to know...

• "Add salty products [sea salt, miso, soy sauce, ...] near the end of cooking. If added at the beginning, the beans will not cook completely and skins will remain tough. (...)
• "Cook legumes with fennel or cumin to help prevent gas. (...)
• "For improved flavor and digestion, more nutrients, and faster cooking, place soaked kombu or kelp seaweed in the bottom of the pot. Add 1 part seaweed to 6 or more parts legumes. Use seaweed soak water to cook grains and vegetables.
• "Soak legumes for 12 hours or overnight in four parts water to one part legume. For best results, change the water once or twice. Lentils and whole dried peas require shorter soaking, while soybeans and garbanzos need to soak longer. Soaking softens skins and begins the sprouting process, which eliminates phytic acid, thereby making more minerals available. (...) Be sure to discard the soak water. (You can use it for watering plants.)
  
• "After bringing to boil, scoop off and discard foam. Continue to boil for 20 minutes without lid at beginning of cooking to let steam rise (breaks up and disperses indigestible enzymes)
• "If problems with gas persist, this step and [the following] are very useful. Pour a little apple-cider, brown-rice, or white-wine vinegar into the water in the last stages of cooking legumes. [...] It is often an effective remedy for those who suffer after eating them.
• "Sprout legumes [...]. Sprouting legumes until they have rootlets maximizes their digestibility. (...) [Bean and all other sprouts] can be steamed, sautéed or lightly simmered. [...] People who are aggressive and overheated(1) will do well with regular use of sprouts; others may find moderate use best."
  

Guidelines given by Pitchford for cooking times range from 1 hour (lentils) to 4-5-6 hours (garbanzo beans and soybeans) simmering - and from 20 minutes to 3 hours in a pressure cooker.
"The above guidelines represent minimum cooking times. In many traditional cultures, simmering legumes, especially the larger beans, all day, ensured digestibility."(2)

"Soybeans, rich in protein and starch as well as fat, are very difficult to digest and are not advisable unless sprouted or fermented, as in tempeh, soy sauce, or miso, or processed as in tofu or soy milk." (3)

Footnotes:
(1) "Heat" refers here to a concept in Traditional Chinese Medicine, which is related to "feeling hot", but is much vaster than that.
(2) Paul Pitchford, "Healing with Whole Foods: Asian Traditions and Modern Nutrition", North Atlantic Books; 3rd edition (2002), p. 512-513
(3) id., p. 145