Dear Kitchen,
I came across a recipe recently that called for "butter beans." I'm not exactly familiar with butter beans. In the photograph that accompanied the recipe, the butter bean looked pretty much exactly like a lima bean, but was beige instead of green. Are these two beans related? I don't really care for lima beans so I sort of hope they aren't.
Thanks,
Marissa
Dear Marissa,
Lima beans are more than just related to butter beans, they are the same thing! In the South, lima beans are often called butter beans and in the UK they almost exclusively refer to them as butter beans. It seems like a lot of people don't like lima beans. I blame those unpleasant school lunch vegetable medleys, although I admit that lima beans can have a sort of starchy flavor that tastes sort of uncooked. Lima beans can be consumed in both their immature stage (fresh and green) as well as their mature (dried and beige). Americans tend to eat them in the immature stage mostly, but if you aren't a lima lover, you might want to try them cooked from the dry stage, rather than the fresh. You can cook them yourself, which like all dried beans can take a long time of soaking and simmering, or you can get them canned. I find that the texture is creamier and the flavor is rich and buttery. You might surprise yourself and become a convert.
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yum -- I love lima beans. I even liked them as a kid. I think my parents used to make frozen ones but I found fresh ones a while ago and they're way better -- much less starchy and more vegetable-y flavor, if that makes sense. When are they in season? I always look at Fairway (Red Hook) and they never have them...
no way!
lima beans are flat.
the (shelled, frozen) butter beans I get at south Georgia farm stands are not flat. they are pale green and shaped like a black bean but slightly larger.
lima beans and butter beans are both shell beans, but I think you gotta check the info . . .
I have always heard limas are better dried, so you got that part right. ; )
Butter Beans and Lima Beans
as written for the Sarasota Herald Tribune, Food Section, April 19, 2000
By Jean Meadows
Extension Agent IV, Family and Consumer Sciences
Cooperative Extension for Sarasota County
Many varieties of beans are grown in Florida, both in home gardens and commercially. Almost all beans may be produced in frost-free areas in the winter; however pole, lima and butter beans grow better in the summer as they need warmer soils and a longer growing time. If you are not from the South you may wonder: "What are butter beans?" For many of us Southerners we dont eat lima beans we eat butter beans.
One of the bulletins from the Georgia Cooperative Extension says: "The terms Lima bean and butter bean are interchangeable. "
Actually there is a little difference in the varieties. Fordhooks are the big lima beans that are available in the markets in many forms fresh, canned, frozen and dried. Butter beans are smaller varieties, usually of the Dixie or Henderson type. There also is a Dixie butter pea that has a similar taste, only shaped more like a pea. Depending on variety, these butter beans or peas can be white, green or speckled. Like the Lima bean, the butter bean is also available in several forms: fresh, canned, frozen and dried. Although for most Southerners none of the other forms compare in taste to the fresh butter beans.
(butter beans taste different than limas)