Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Green beans can be roughly divided into two groups: the round and the flat. The round
types, most famously Blue Lake and the French haricots verts, tend to be more delicate in
texture and brighter in flavor than the flat types. These should almost always be cooked
briefly to preserve their color. Flat beans, such as the Italian Romano, are meatier and
more assertive. You can cook them longer than round beans - long enough even that the
color will fade to olive drab. In fact, because of their thick, meaty texture, their flavor ac-
tually seems to improve with long cooking.
"Green" beans also come in different colors. There are chlorophyll-free yellow beans
and several varieties that are purple. And there are beans that are purple and yellow, such
as the dragon tongue bean. Yellow beans keep their color during cooking, but purple and
patterned beans fade to green - a dull green at that. The Asian yard-long bean, which looks
like a stretched-out green bean (it comes in purple as well), is actually more closely re-
lated to the black-eyed pea. Its flavor reflects that lineage, but its colors are bound by the
same scientific laws as regular green beans.
Green beans are sometimes called "string beans," although that is a misnomer - or at
least an antique usage. A tough filament runs up the seam of old green bean varieties and
needs to be removed before cooking (just as with edible pod peas). The string was bred
out of most popular varieties around the turn of the cen tury, but you can occasionally find
heirlooms that still have it. The old name "snap bean" is much more to the point and still
valid, as green beans wilt quickly and should be crisp enough when you buy them that
they'll snap cleanly in half.
Some legumes are left to grow to full maturity, whereupon they are shelled and dried
for use through the winter. Dried beans come in sizes ranging from a grain of rice to as
big as your thumbnail; in a wide assortment of jewel-like colors - reds, pinks, purples,
maroons, even black; and in an almost countless array of patterns. (Unfortunately, for the
most part these brilliant colors fade to various shades of tan and brown during cooking, al-
though some of the patterns are distinct enough still to be visible.) Dried beans are picked
fully mature, after most of the sugars have turned to starch. The drying after harvest re-
moves all but the last traces of moisture, so they can be stored almost forever.
That also means that dried beans require extensive cooking in plenty of water to be-
come edible, as those rock-hard starch granules need not only to soften but also to reab-
sorb the lost moisture. You can shorten the cooking time somewhat by soaking the beans
beforehand (though, contrary to popular opinion, this does little to allay dried beans' fam-
ous gastric side effects, and soaked beans never come close to the richness of beans that
have been cooked without soaking). Depending on the size of the bean and how long it's
