BEAN YEAR

Here’s the final section of Bean Letter 1. Bean Box 2 – lentils and bean family herbs launches tomorrow

Red Kidney Beans / Rajma

This is #1 bean in the #1 bean country on the planet, India. In this first box I wanted to showcase the most popular bean in the US, where we are, and in the place who eats the most beans per capita, which is India. I was not expecting it to be a Phaseolusvulgaris variety which is from Central and South America. I thought a lentil or perhaps the chickpea. I reviewed many sources from Indian government agricultural publications to pop-journalism articles about the most popular beans in India,all of them point to the Red Kidney. 

I highly recommend the website ecurry.com for recipes from the Indian subcontinent and diaspora. 

Similarly there is the Jamaican and larger Caribbean dish of rice and peas, which use kidney beans, and of course chili con carnein Tex-Mex cuisine.

However, being from Alabama, when I think of the Kidney Bean I think of New Orleans. There is a display at the Southern Food Museum in New Orleans that showcases the Camellia’sbrand beans, it’s rightly famous and a local staple in New Orleans. Obviously I had to choose them.

Camellia’s website has a red beans and rice recipe, but as always, the serious eats recipe is better. 

And for more fun facts to impress people at parties: Canellini beans are just white kidney beans. I will not be sending any other “baking” bean beans this year. They are often a larger white bean in the same species. The wide aims of this project don’t leave space this year for them. I am considering alternating next year in the Phaseolus vulgaris box to focus on the big white soup and baking beans. So, if you want to try a baked bean recipe, like boston baked beans, chuck wagon baked beans, pizza beans, or cassoulet,  this is your opportunity. 

And some tunes for your beany endeavors, I recommend the Louis Armstrong song “Red Beans and Ricely Yours”.

At this juncture I need to mention that you need to pre-soak these beans in salted water and boil them for at least 10 minutes. (Yes, salted.) There is an outside chance of toxicity from a naturally occurring chemical called PHA. A slow cooker doesn’t heat the bean enough to denature this chemical, you actually need to pre-soak them and boil them. Which you need to do anyway. 

As I close out and let you enjoy the beans, we need to talk about toots. 

Yes, beans have complicated starches/sugars that can give people the toots. These are broadly called FODMAPS, fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols. I love a food acronym and I love non-digestible sugars and starches. Our own bodies can’t easily break down, absorb, and use these chemicals. What does eat this stuff is all the trillions of critters that live with you in your gut. I read a report once that made the argument that, since there are morenon-us microbes that live on our skin and in our gut than there are cells of our bodies, that we should really consider “ourself” as more of an ecosystem that moves around. It goes further to argue that we have an ecological obligation to help the community of entities that we are. What better way to do that than feeding them the FODMAPS they love? Toots are a sign that our other-selves are happy. 😊

Right?

We have a family motto: We don’t guess, we look it up. 

Not everyone wants to sound like a bugle playing taps at a scout camp all day. So I looked it up. Or rather, serious eats looked it up, the TLDR is that beano works. Beano is α-Galactosidase, an enzyme that breaks down these complicated saccharides. Nothing else they tried works. You can add the Beano directly to the food, after it has cooled to less than 104F. They pull apart and use 1-2 Beano 800 tablets to 1 pound, or a can, of cooked beans. It works better in a puree, where the beans are broken up, than in recipes that leave the beans whole. In the otherwise well written review, they don’t mention how long to wait for the enzyme to break up the starches, but I have to assume at least a few minutes. 

I’ll let you get to the beans, you’ve got some research to do on how you want to prepare them. Having some ready to go, pre-soaking and cooking a batch plainly with some salt, onion, garlic, and bay leaf or two and putting them in the fridge readyto use will increase the likelihood you cook with them. I am eager to hear what people do with the beans and what you think of them. 

Thanks for supporting this project and exploring beans with me, Brian.