Boil lima beans for 2-2.5 hours. Boil baby lima beans for 1 hour.
How to cook lima beans
1 cup lima beans, water for soaking, 5 cups water for boiling
How long to soak beans?
1. Pour the lima beans into a saucepan and cover with cold water with a margin of 3 centimeters.
2. Soak lima beans for 6-12 hours in the refrigerator.
3. Put the pan on the fire, bring to a boil over medium heat.
4. After boiling, cook the beans with medium boiling for 10 minutes, carefully watching the foam.
5. Reduce heat and cook lima beans for 2-2.5 hours, small baby – 50 minutes.
6. After cooking, drain the water, salt the beans, chop with a blender if desired.
7. Serve with herbs and vegetable oil.
Cooking Tips
Whether or not to soak lima beans Unsoaked lima beans
will take twice as long to cook, but they can overcook and not be as soft on the inside. It is soaking that shortens the cooking time and provides an even texture without overcooking.
How to salt lima beans
To keep the beans as soft as possible, do not salt the beans when boiling. But immediately after cooking or when adding to other products, lima beans can be salted.
If the beans are old (more than six months from production), add another 20 minutes to the cooking time.
Tasty Facts
Lima beans (other names for baby lima, lima beans, American beans) are large white beans that have a creamy flavor, for which they received the name “cream beans”. Discovered by the Spaniards in Central and South America, then brought to Europe and North America.
There are 2 types of lima beans: large “potato”, which tastes like starchy foods; and baby lima – small in size, and more dense.
Lima beans hold their shape well when cooked, and when mashed, especially if the shell is removed, they get a creamy texture.
Lima beans are quite large, while the shell is quite thin. Due to the white color and rather large size (when boiled, lima beans increase in size by 1.2-1.3 times), dishes made from it are visually very unusual and are very popular with children.
Lima beans are recommended for vegetarians and fasting people because of the huge amount of vegetable protein they contain.
It is recommended to store lima beans in an airtight container for 1 year.
Serve lima beans with greens, onion and garlic, use as a side dish and in soups. For a change, you can cook lima beans in meat broth. The original Baby Lima bean dish is succotash.