About this time of the year, velvety, rolling hills of invitingly verdant fava beans drape over tables at the Farmer’s Market. They look so good, I REALLY have to hold myself back from grabbing bucketloads of them to take home and cook up. I really like beans and they’re so good for you–full of great protein and all that good fiber.
However…
Fava beans are no ordinary bean. They are a pain in the butt to process. And I don’t mean a little one–I mean a BIG pain in the butt to process. The first time I tried them, I was trying to make a nice pasta dish for a friend who was coming for lunch. I thought I was just going to shell some beans and put them into the pasta to add some nice color and protein to the dish. Oh no–no, no, no. Not only do you have to shell the beans, but then you have to blanch them and then laboriously take the outer hull off the bean to reveal the actual green bean. And I’m here to tell you, folks: This takes a minute. And at the end of this, all you’ve got to show for your efforts of processing a bushel of pods, is about a cup of beans. And what the hell do you do with that mountain of pods that’s leftover?! Sure, you can compost them, but after all–this is the Stone Soup Cook. Is there anything you can do with them to eat them?
This year, with the advent of The Stone Soup Cook, I decided to see if I could reconcile my rather complicated relationship with this legume.
Last weekend, when I first saw the beans at the market, I went directly to the farmers to find out what they could tell me about uses for them. The farmers stand around and eat them out of hand–raw. I asked about this and they said, yes, that they were good eaten raw, but you had to pick the small, slender young pods for this. “Just wash them, cut them up and put them in salads raw!” the farmer told me. The larger they get, he warned, the drier and tougher they get–good for cooking, but not so good for eating raw. Got it–I picked some small, slender pods. I also picked out a bagful of the larger ones to use for soups, stews, whatever. I have heard that you can grill them. I asked about that–“oh–yes, yes! use the young pods, brush them with a little olive oil marinade and slap them on a grill for 2-3 minutes a side–they’re great that way!” OK..so two new, very easy methods for preparing fava beans, that both use the pods.
Next, I polled folks at church. One person said that she loves them in a Moroccan stew. OK–there’s another dish to be made with them, but in their bean form. I asked what to do with the pods and she said–“oh! back on the farm, we used to feed them to the pigs!” Great. Well, I’m fresh out of pigs, so…
Someone else said hummus, another said to mix them with tomatoes and jalapeños and make a salsa. I thought I might make minestrone and put them in there. But we’re still left with the pods, aren’t we?
OK–time to start cooking. The first recipe I tried was grilling the young, slender pods. I made roast chicken, pasta picante as a side and grilled fava beans as the veg. I washed the favas up, dried them, brushed them with the olive oil picante sauce for the pasta and slapped them on the grill for 2-3 minutes per side. Nothing could have been easier. They were nice and tender and actually tasted pretty good…but that texture! Gahhhhh!!!!! The pods have a velvety exterior and a super soft, velvety interior–think those super-soft baby blankets. This does not come off in the cooking process and eating the grilled pods was like French kissing a cat. The next morning, Mr. Stone Soup was still running his tongue against his teeth trying to get that feeling out of his mouth. I have to admit, I was too. So that was a miss.
And I’m here to tell you that eating them raw was no bargain, either–same velvety, hairy situation, only raw and cold. Eeeeeeyyyyyyaaaahhhhh…
So we’re back to the drawing board. Back to shelling and blanching them. And actually, they’re quite good that way, but you gotta have time on your hands to commit to that process.
And wait…you can get them dried. That’s right–dried. Already processed, blanched, out of their outer hulls. Are fresh really that much better that I should go to all that trouble? I’m gonna find out.
This week’s menus were kind of “ad hoc” because I still had some food leftover from pasta week. I had half a chicken and rather a lot of the pasta picante leftover. Here’s what the week’s menu looked like:
Saturday: Leftover pasta picante, seared salmon, grilled fava beans
Sunday: Leftover pasta picante, leftover chicken, salad with raw fava beans
Monday: Spaghetti, steamed asparagus
Tuesday: Roast chicken, roast potatoes, celeriac salad
Wednesday: Mock ministrone soup, French bread
Thursday: we ate out!
Friday: Chicken, spaghetti sauce, noodles and burrata bake
Finally, here’s a primer on processing fresh fava beans:
First, you have to shell them. Start by removing the fibrous string, if you can, off both sides at once to sort of “unzip” the pod:
Next, open the pod up to reveal the beans. I found that there are usually 4-5 beans per pod.
Pull those out. You will have the most success with this shelling process with the larger beans. The smaller, slimmer, less mature pods will have significantly smaller beans in them and they aren’t particularly worth shelling–better for eating raw or grilling, if you can stand the texture.
This is the haul of beans I got from the pods in the feature photo:
And here is the pile of beans versus the pile of spent pods left from the shelling process:
But we’re not done yet.
Notice that the beans are kind of gray-green in color. This is because your’e looking at the outer hull of the bean. Now you have to blanch the beans so that you can remove the outer hull–it is rather tough.
Boil the beans for about 30-45 seconds and then plunge them into ice water to stop the cooking:
Once the beans are cooled off, remove the outer husk by pinching the bean gently–I found that the best place to pinch was at the inner “dimple” of the bean:
You should see a bright green inner bean pop out. Discard the outer hull. Here is my haul of outer hulls resulting from this process:
And, finally, the beans, all processed and ready to use:
The pile of pods from the feature photo yielded about a cup and a quarter of beans and took me almost an hour to process. I got faster at it as I refined the process, so figure more like 45 minutes if you’re experienced.
Here’s the bottom line: Fresh fava beans are delicious and they were wonderful in the minestrone that I used them in. But I cannot imagine having time to process enough fresh fava beans to make, for example, hummus with them, which would require at least a couple of cups of beans to make it worth while, let alone shelling enough to use in several dishes through the week. Also, since I didn’t like the cat tongue texture of the pods, I can’t figure out what to do with all those pods except compost them–not a bad use, but as the Stone Soup Cook, I’d prefer to find a way to cook with them. But try as a might, I have not been able to find another way to use them.
If you have suggestions on how to use the leftover pods, please leave a comment!
Next week, I’m going to experiment with dried fava beans and see how the taste and convenience compares. Stay tuned!
As always, thanks for checking in with me here at The Stone Soup Cook. Until next week:
Peace, love and good food!
Keri
