Butter beans with tomatoes and spinach – it’s a health bomb! And very trending at the moment: these are cool beans!
Cool beans
You can’t move for a bean recipe, news bit or advert right now. Beans are definitely having their moment.
Which is good news because they are quite a nutritional powerhouse. Not just fibre, which everyone always knew (after all it’s the indigestible carbs in them that make you fart), but also protein which has become a bit of the holy nutritional grail.
Plus, they are a source of iron, magnesium and potassium – the last two contributing factors to a good night’s sleep.
And they are cheap, especially if you buy them dried and cook them yourself, and a very versatile cooking ingredient.
We Brits have been on the case for decades, in spite of being berated for poor diet. Suddenly, baked beans on toast appear in a completely new and positive light!
Dry beans vs. green beans
Broadly speaking, beans are vegetables producing pods full of seeds of one kind of another. Hence coffee, vanilla and cocoa beans: these plants have also adopted the word. In some bean varieties the pods are edible and in others only the seeds, and sometimes only when previously dried.
A common misconception about the dry vs. green beans is that if you leave any bean pods or seeds to dry, they will turn into red kidney, cannellini or pintos.
That’s not the case: there are several varieties of green beans, including broad, runner and French, and a separate bunch of even more types of dry beans. Butter beans, aka lima beans in America, are the aristos of the dry bean world: fat, substantial, creamy and delicious.
Cook your own beans
I mentioned cheap, and they are a frugal ingredient, perfect for delicious but budget cooking. Not, however, if you buy them cooked, in water, in jars or tins!
A quick comparison tells it all: nice and posh jars of cooked butter beans cost about £6 per kilo, and that includes the brine. Dry butter beans usually swell to 3 times their weight in cooking, so if you buy them dry, even good organic brands, they will cost you about £1 a kilo! That’s half the price of even standard tinned ones. Simple maths, and a no brainer which ones to go for.
Hassle to soak and cook?
Don’t make me laugh: soaking beans overnight requires no effort and no hands-on kitchen time. Cooking them admittedly last a while, about an hour, but once cooked in a large batch, they can be stored in jars in the fridge for weeks.
And if you own a pressure cooker or an instant pot, they will be soft and tender in twenty minutes. With either of these appliances though, don’t skip the soaking unless you want to risk the beans breaking and turning to mush.
And a tip: whatever you read online, the belief that beans should not be salted before they are tender is not a myth: only add salt at the end of the cooking process. It won’t make them inedible if you add salt earlier, even to the soaking water, but it will take twice as long for them to soften.
How to cook my tomato and spinach butter beans
This is a casserole rather than a stew, with the focus on chunky rather than soupy.
The base is simple: sliced shallots or onions and garlic, cooked over medium heat with olive oil and fragrant spices, including cumin, fennel, chilli and paprika.
To enhance the tomato flavour which in my geolocation is rarely strong, I add sun dried tomato paste. It can easily be swapped for ordinary tomato puree, if that’s all you have.
Once the onions have softened, cherry tomatoes are added and cooked to wilt, but not dissolve. Ideally pick small plum ones as they retain their shape well when cooked.
Cooked, drained beans (from scratch, I hope) go in next, with some maple syrup and sherry vinegar, and now it is the time for salt, as well as black pepper and any extra spices and seasonings, to taste.
Finally, washed young spinach leaves can be gradually folded in and wilted.
Variations
You can prepare this dish with other types of dry beans, preferably cooked from scratch as I keep recommending.
You can also replace fresh tomatoes with tinned, but I wouldn’t add all the juices in – not for this kind of a casserole.
Instead of spinach, feel free to add kale, chard or other greens, extending the cooking time for the tougher leaves.
More bean recipes
Simple and basic vegetarian chilli recipe. It’s worth soaking and cooking beans for the best chilli but tins make an easy recipe. This vegetarian chilli is garnished with pickled red onions, ready in 20 minutes.
Butter beans with ham hock, a slow cooked stew of incredible flavours and richness, the ultimate comfort dish. Butter beans need soaking overnight, but what’s difficult about that?
Baked beans with bacon are called b-b-beans in my house. Dry beans soaked overnight, slab bacon, molasses and mustard, five hours cooking – beat that, Mr Heinz!
More vegetarian casserole recipes
For a delicious and healthy vegetarian dish try my cabbage and walnut casserole recipe. Baked with a savoury mixture of onions, spices and herbs, this Ottolenghi-inspired comfort food is perfect for any occasion.
Crispy and spicy roasted chickpeas with grilled peppers, a wholesome vegetarian lunch or dinner as chickpeas are an excellent source of protein and fibre.
Spinach and cheese bake, a healthy casserole served as a side dish or for brunch. This is an easy recipe for baked spinach with cheese, made with fresh spinach.