It may seem odd to speak of dried beans as “in season,” a term usually reserved for perishables, but there is something about winter that makes it especially perfect for dried beans and their requisite slow simmering. Perhaps it’s the ancient longing for hearth and fire, for home and safety that a pot of cooking beans represents.
My mother grew up on the proverbial wrong side of the tracks in Fort Worth, Texas, and when she spoke of her childhood, much of which was harsh, she said, “But Mama always had a pot of beans simmering on the stove, and we knew we’d never be hungry.”
Her comment has stayed with me, and beans have become a symbol of well-being for me, especially in cold weather. I never make a pot of beans, no matter how exotic the dish they are destined for— from the cassoulet of southern France to the chiles of the American Southwest–without thinking of the comfort and hope that a pot of beans brought to my mother as a young girl.
Beans have a certain magical quality. A single bean seed can produce a plant that bears pounds of new bean pods. The pods themselves can be eaten as fresh string beans, before the seeds inside the pod begin to develop. As the beans inside the pods swell, the skin of the pods begin to toughen and dry. Picked demi-sec, as the French say, or half-dried, these are the beans we see in late summer and fall, in shriveled pods, the beans inside fully mature, but still tender to the bite. If left in the fields to dry, the pods will become brittle, the beans much drier, and then they can be cut, windrowed and threshed. These are the dried beans we keep in the pantry and which will need that lovely slow simmer to again become tender.
Dried beans can be simply cooked with a bay leaf, eventually adding salt, and then used in many varied dishes that call for cooked beans. I’ve included one here for Sea Bass on a Bed of Pureed White Beans. The beans may also be cooked with lots of seasonings, as in the recipe here for the North African bean stew, loubia.
DIG IN!
