Beans

Excluding green and yellow snap beans, most beans people eat today are canned or dried. Beans should be a regular part of your diet because they supply the highest amount of protein found in any plant source, abundant complex carbohydrates, and high dietary fiber. Soybeans are the only beans that are a complete protein source. The protein found in all other beans is incomplete, so combine with rice, other grains, nuts, small amounts of chicken, fish, cheese, or yogurt to make it complete.

As members of the legume family, beans are plants that contain several seeds in a pod and grow on bushes or vines. Beans are fruits not vegetables from a botanical standpoint, are the reproductive part of the plant, and divided into two broad groups: fresh-shelled beans, and edible-pod beans (see green beans & peas.)

China is the largest producer of fava beans, with the remainder coming from Egypt, Italy, Great Britain, Morocco, Spain, Denmark, and Brazil, with black-eyed peas coming primarily from Africa, India, China, the West Indies, and the southeastern United States. California is the major producer of shell beans in the United States.

Selection & Storage
Look for beans with good colored pods that are plump and well filled but not cracked, bulging, bursting, withered, brown, or dried. Beans that are already shelled should be plump and fresh looking. Unwashed beans-shelled or left in their pods-will last several days when refrigerated in plastic bags.

Preparation
Pop fresh beans out of their pods before boiling in salted water to be eaten with salt, pepper, and butter, or added to a more complex dish. You can shell most beans by opening the casing at the seam. Cutting off one end of the pod with a sharp paring knife can sometimes make this easier.

Fava beans are the hardest to shell because of their double casing. Getting the beans out is easy enough by pushing the beans out at the seam and working down the pod from one end to the other. To remove the inner casing, boil the beans in salted water for 30 to 60 seconds, refresh in cold water, and then squirt the beans out of their inner skin with a fingernail.

Use garlic, onion, fresh herbs, and judicious amounts of cured pork to bring out the best in most beans. Fava beans taste great teamed with olive oil or Mediterranean or Middle Eastern spices like cumin. Beans are also good in light ragouts with tomatoes, salads, other vegetables, and with grains such as rice or couscous.

Tony's Tip
When buying beans in bulk, reject any beans that are cracked or broken, and look for any insect damage which usually shows up as pinhole-sized marks.

Tony's Favorite Recipe
Fresh Bean Chowder with Pistou

Varieties
Black-eyed peas are small, kidney shaped, creamy beans with a black patch or eye on the inner portion. Despite their name, they are related to the yard-long bean common in Asia, and are also known as field peas, cowpeas, cream peas, Jerusalem peas, Tonkin peas, crowed peas, and marble peas.

Cranberry beans are oval shaped with a nutty flavor, and aren't related to real cranberries except for the red color that streaks and speckles the pods that look like deflated balloons, as well as the beans inside. When cooked, the shelled beans will lose their red color.

Fava beans are long (sometimes as much as 18 inches) puffy, green pods. The pale green beans inside have a second skin to go through before getting to the edible bean (which may not be necessary if the beans are very young). Fava beans, also known as broad beans, horse beans, and Windsor beans, are native to Africa and are most often associated with the cuisine of the Mediterranean rim, particularly Italy and the countries of North Africa.

Lima beans were named after the capital of Peru and brought to the United States from that city in 1824 by Captain John Harris of the U.S. Navy. The two most common varieties are Fordhook and Baby Limas.

Fordhook limas are large dark green, broad, somewhat flat pods with light green beans. They are also known as Sieva beans, Butter beans, Civet beans, Saawee beans, Carolina beans, Buffin beans, and Sugar beans. When mottled with purple, lima beans are called Calico or Speckled Butter beans.

Baby limas are not a younger version of the Fordhook, but a smaller, milder tasting variety with a thin skin that contains less starch than the larger Fordhook.

Soybeans are probably the most versatile and widely used beans in the world, but less known as a fresh vegetable than they are as a processed food that uses a different type of bean. They are dried and ground into flour, turned into milk and cooking oil, pressed into curd form as tofu, a mainstay of meatless protein by itself, and in products such as hot dogs and hamburgers. The vegetable or cooking bean has a fuzzy, bright green pod that, when plump, contains about two beans.

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