With Lima Beans Nutrition and Taste are Never too Far apart
Lima beans, if you think about it, just have to be better than to get credit for; they have to be - nothing is that bad! But even you are very suspicious of of any recipe that contained lima beans an important ingredient, you have to allow that they offer a great buttery texture in your mouth, and if you like to cook, you have to at least grudgingly admire how well they lend themselves to so many recipes without drawing attention to themselves. If your recipes include Lima beans, nutrition is one thing you don't have to worry about; what you do need to worry about though is the way you can present this much-maligned while not drawing any protests from your victims .. er .. appreciative guests. Here are two great recipes that should turn the boring reputation beans have right around.
Let's start with a kind of sweetened dish of beans with pepper and tomato. Why is it sweet? It's the sweetness in red pepper of course, and whatever sweetness tomatoes have to offer. This is a dish that does very well on its own, although it can really shine as a side dish with a variety of main courses.
Let's start with boiling half a pound of white Lima beans in a quart of water, with two cloves of garlic, a bay leaf and a chopped onion thrown in. It'll need to cook at a low simmer for an hour at first to tenderize; add a little salt to taste, and boil for another hour until everything is nice and soft. Drain the beans out and remove the other additives. In a heavy skillet, throw in a diced red pepper in a little olive oil, and cook about five minutes. Add in a couple of chopped cloves of garlic, and stirfry for about a minute. Chop up a pound of tomatoes and throw them in the skillet and cook for 10 minutes. It should be the right time now to add in a bit of chopped mint, and mix everything in with the beans and a cup of the broth you boiled the beans in. In this dish of beans, nutrition facts appear pretty benign - there is nearly no saturated fats, he only taken about 200 calories.
Christmas lima beans can be terrific to look at when they're cooked - they're a wonderful mixture of mixed-up white and maroon, and there is a natural mixed sweet savory taste. For our next recipe, you'll need a pound of Lima beans and boil them in the same way as in the tomato recipe above. Just make sure that you don't ever raise the boil to anything above a simmer. Too much boiling will damage how the beans look.
Now you need to drain the broth, and boil it for as long as it takes to reduce it to about half the original volume. Throw in the beans again and season with a couple of sprigs of fresh mint all nice and chopped. Your mint beans are ready to serve now. Again, as in any dish with beans, nutrition facts can be really refreshing to read - no more than 300 calories, and no saturated fat whatsoever.