Canned butter beans create a fresh new take on hummus. Recipe below.
LATELY, WE’VE BEEN ENJOYING BUTTER BEANS—feed-me-in-a-hurry canned butter beans—and using them in some simple, delicious ways.
Most recently, we’ve fallen in love with hummus made from canned butter beans. We seem to have it around all the time and are always finding new ways to use it. With a few nice whole-grain crackers, it gets me past that late-afternoon energy droop. It’s a nice little pre-dinner starter, a great condiment, a serious sandwich ingredient. You can do so much with it.
Butter beans, Phaseolus lunatus, are creamy, relatively large, flat beans with a mild flavor and creamy texture. The fresh ones are also called lima beans and are a pale green; the dried ones are an ivory color. They are packed with health benefits—protein, iron and fiber, for starters. The are great for your gut health and, for those with diabetes, are great for diabetes control.
PS#1: The liquid that comes with canned beans now has a name: aquafaba. It’s been known for some time that aquafaba can be used as a substitute for egg whites in some recipes—a useful thing to know if you are a vegan and a baker. Do I understand the science behind this? I do not. But for a primer on baking with aquafaba, visit the King Arthur Flour website. (Top point: aquafaba-based meringues are their favorite.)
PS#2: Don’t ever eat raw lima or butter beans. In their raw state, they contain linamarin, a chemical that breaks down into poisonous cyanide when the bean is chewed. That enzyme is destroyed by cooking. The linamarin content of wild lima beans can be very high; the varieties grown in US agriculture have much a lower linamarin content. To stay on the safe side, if you ever are cooking with raw lima beans, simmer them for at least ten minutes. And, of course, this is not a problem you are going to encounter with canned beans.
PS#3: We are continuing to explore ways to use butter beans. For starters, we recommend that you try canned butter beans in our Pizza Beans recipe. You will be so happy!
Butter Bean Hummus
Ingredients
- 2 15-ounce cans of butter beans
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- 5 or more tablespoons of the bean liquid
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 4 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1/2 cup tahini
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 3/4 teaspoon ground cumin
Optional garnishes
- sumac, paprika, finely chopped parsley, olive oil
Instructions
- First, drain the canned butter beans using a sieve over a bowl, making sure to save the liquid (aquafaba) in the cans.
- Put the drained beans, 5 tablespoons of the aquafaba, and everything else except the garnishes into a blender of food processor. Whirl until things start to become uniform. If the mixture is very thick, add another tablespoon of aquafaba and go again. Your goal is a smooth, uniform mass that is easy to scoop up with pita wedges or crackers, but not oozy.
- Adjust the salt to your taste. Yes, you may add more garlic if you are a garlic lover—for this recipe, we leaned on the lighter side.
- The garnishes shown here are a little bit of sumac and a dash of olive oil. Paprika works beautifully too on this hummus—I am of the school of you can never go wrong with paprika. You may also chop some parsley for a dash of green—for this use, it is very gratifying to hack up the parsley until it is nearly dust.
- Once you have this recipe under your belt, try varying the theme—toss in a few olives, or a bit of dill, or a little fresh or sun-dried tomato into the blender.
- Serving: As a dip or snack, serve this with pita wedges, your favorite crackers, or crudités. Right now we are addicted to the crackers shown in our photo, Organic Seedy Crackers from Trader Joe’s, which are very very crisp and very very delicious.
- Store in the fridge up to four days. Can you freeze it? Yes! Store in an airtight container for up to 10 weeks.