Kidney, pinto, black beans, chickpeas, lima beans – canned beans cook fast and produce less gas.
Dried Lima Bean Casserole hot out of the oven.
Few could say that they do not have memories of meals and specific foods-flavors, aromas, textures, conversations, family recipes, comforting familiar rituals and celebrations. Food is a connection to the past, to our families, identity and culture. In the expression "as American as apple pie," most of us understand the reference to patriotic values and our identity and most of us have a memory of making and eating a perfect apple pie. Legumes may not have risen to this type of distinction with less positive attributes suggested by the word "bean" but nearly every part of the country and the world has a culture-defining legume dish. Perhaps your family still maintains the strong New England tradition of Saturday night "Boston" Baked Beans or eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day?
So many varieties and benefits
Whether your family's food culture included legumes or not, many older Americans remember the awareness raised by Francis Moore Lappe's book, "Diet for a Small Planet". If you didn't lean into vegetarianism at the time, new encouragement for using legumes is on the way. The issues of providing enough nutritious food for the world without a heavy toll on the environment and the potential disease prevention benefits of plant based-diets have become the renewed targets of world-wide agricultural and health research. Our current dietary recommendation for best health for seniors is to include at least 1 ½ to 2 cups of legumes per week. Because legumes provide high quality protein along with excellent levels of other nutrients not found in animal protein sources, seniors who include legumes on a regular basis have higher diet quality. Don't worry about combining the beans with complementary foods at the same meal; as long as you get the amino acids needed to boost the legume protein at some time during the day, this will be sufficient.
The word "legume" sometimes causes confusion because it encompasses the plants of fresh and dried beans, peas, lentils, chickpeas, soybeans and peanuts – all in the botanical family Leguminosae. However, in the U.S., the common use of the term refers to the dried, edible seeds of the plant such as split peas, black, pinto, navy or kidney beans, lentils, dried lima or fava beans, black-eyed peas, chickpeas, etc.
Feeling 'windy'?
Before we go any further in this discussion, let's get the unspoken out in the open eating legumes, even when we enjoy them, may cause some unpleasant digestive experiences. A polite Victorian-era expression referred to this as "windiness". It seems that the phenomenon has occurred for as long as people have been eating legumes with Romans, Sumerians and, of course, Shakespeare making jokes, ascribing it unfavorable mystical qualities and even depicting farts in paintings.
For the modern legume eater there are some ways to reduce the windiness and abdominal discomfort. Normal bacterial fermentation and some of the other carbohydrates in the digestive system of legume fiber is responsible for the gas.
Cooking beans with herbs borrowed from Mexican and Indian cuisine, epazote or asafetida, will break down some of the gas producing fiber.
Rehydrating beans with lots of water, using a long soaking method and pouring out the soaking water before the final cooking stage will remove fermentable carbohydrates
Choosing lentils and split peas and legumes that you respond well to
Using canned beans the high temperature canning process helps break down fiber
Start eating very small amounts of beans to increase your tolerance for fiber
Use a gas reducing enzyme like Beano
Thinking about my own connection to the past and family culture, I am grateful that I grew up with legumes. My parents probably used these to stretch a tight budget but they also believed that we should learn to eat everything and exposed us to as much as they could afford. As I learned to like legumes, I enjoyed split pea and ham, classic lentil and navy bean soups, chili with kidney beans, and dried lima bean casserole. No else in my family seems to remember the lima bean casserole but I recreated a recipe to share for your own household legume culture. Eating beans may be "as American as apple pie".
Leslie's Dried Lima Bean Casserole
1. Rehydrate about 1 ½ cups of dried large lima beans, starting by covering with about 5 cups of water bringing them just to boiling for 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from heat and let them stand covered for 4 to 24 hours (to maximize fart prevention, you can drain and recover with hot water a second time). Beans will expand to about 2 ½ to 3 times the original volume.
2. Drain and rinse the beans again and add to a large pot covered with 4 to 5 inches of water or chicken broth. Salt the water (helps to soften the beans) and bring just to boiling (not rolling). Let the beans cook gently until very soft-the goal is thoroughly and evenly soft, and this is best accomplished with slow cooking. Drain when tender.
3. While the beans are cooking, make a concentrated tomato sauce starting by sautéing 1 large, sliced onion and 3 to 4 sliced garlic cloves until very tender. Add 4 to 5 grated (this is the latest culinary trend) Roma tomatoes and let them cook with the onion/garlic mix until the liquid is reduced. Add about 2 cups of prepared tomato sauce and a couple teaspoons of dry or 1 tablespoon fresh thyme (oregano, herb de province, or basil could be substituted) and salt and pepper as desired. Carefully allow this to reduce a bit to make a nice bold tomato sauce. Totally optional: about ½ pound browned sausage pieces could be added if desired.
4. Oil a casserole dish and place the cooked drained beans in the dish and cover with the sauce, mixing gently to coat the beans. Place in a 350 F oven for about 30 minutes until it is hot.
Leslie Shallcross is a registered dietitian and professor of Extension, Health, Home and Family Development at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Extension.
