Filling a Much-Needed Void

Do you recognize the objects in this picture?  They look a little like bean pods, don’t they?  Not the nicest bean pods, perhaps.  A little dried-out looking, a little brown and spotty. Probably not good to eat. Or are they?

The little hints of red you can see in there might be a clue as to what’s really going on here.  These aren’t way over-the-hill green beans, as it happens.  They’re kidney beans.  If you have never encountered shelling beans still in their pods, it can be a little startling to realize that they start their lives looking quite different to what we think of when we think about kidney beans, or black beans or flageolets, or any other kind of shelling bean.

They look so different, in their raw and completely unprocessed state, in fact, that many people won’t buy them, afraid that they won’t know what to do with them.  That’s more or less why I ended up with these: a greengrocer friend gave me heaps of them earlier today because they’d been sitting unloved in her coolers for several weeks.  Ironically, the very customers who had told my greengrocer friend how much they loved beans and how they wished they could buy fresh local beans from her had simply not bought them.

When my friend told me a week or so ago that the beans weren’t getting purchased, I said “I bet customers are freaked out by the way they look.  I bet they don’t know what to do with beans that have to be shelled.”  Seems that I was right.  Which is her loss, but my gain, and as a thank-you, I’m  writing this little shelling bean tutorial, so that next time she sells shelling beans, she can point people to a blog post that explains what to do with these unpromising little podlets.

What you do is quite simple.  You sit down with a bowl, and a bowl or bag to toss the empty shells in, and you pull apart the pods with your fingers.

The pods are pretty sturdy.  If they are on the dry side, they will be leathery or cardboardy in texture.  If they are just off the vines, they will be woody but flexible.  Usually all you have to do is pinch the bean to open the seams up, then split down one seam or the other (or both!) with your finger, taking the beans with you.

Discard any beans that are discolored, moldy, extremely shriveled, or extremely tiny.  Throw the shells into the trash or onto your compost pile.

When you’ve shelled them all, give them a good wash in a colander and let them drain for ten or fifteen minutes.

Shelling beans is a fairly quick process.  I know it sounds tedious, but really it doesn’t take long at all.  I shelled almost five quarts of beans in about 40 minutes today, while hanging out in the kitchen with my Belovedary.  That is a lot of beans.  But still not a lot of work.

It’s worth doing large batches of bean-shelling and bean-cooking when you have the time, so that then you will have the beans available when you want them.  Beans can be frozen directly after shelling and washing, or you can freeze them after you cook them.

To cook fresh beans, put them into a large heavy pot or a slow-cooker on the high setting with an equal volume of cold water.  Boil until they are nice and soft all the way through, but not mushy.

You can eat them as-is once they are thoroughly cooked, or use them in recipes, just as you would use canned cooked beans.

A note about kidney beans/red beans:  Red and white kidney beans are high in haemagglutins, a class of chemicals that can cause a form of usually nonfatal but highly unpleasant poisoning whose symptoms include vomiting and diarrhea.  The way to avoid it is thorough cooking of the beans.  A minimum of ten minutes in which the entire pot of beans is at or above the boiling point of water — 212F, or 100C — takes care of it.  This is why if you cook them in a slow-cooker, you should cook them on the higher heat setting, not the lower, and ensure that things do boil properly.