On 21/10/2011 09:41, harry wrote:
On Oct 20, 6:51 pm, David in
wrote:
Tried an experiment the other day in the kitchen which worked well.
I've collected lots of dry runner bean pods and shelled them without
knowing what to do with them all. Anyway, soaked some overnight in a
bowl of boiling water to de-wind them. Then boiled them for half hour
until tender then chilled them running some cold water over them. At
this stage the tough skins on the beans tear off quite easily if split
with a small knife. This task isn't as tedious as it may sound because
the beans are quite large and it doesn't take a lot to make a reasonable
sized portion. The resulting pile of cooked skinless beans tastes (to me
anyway) a lot like roasted sweet chestnuts. I threw them into a curry
and they worked very well.

So, the dried runner bean pods are worth harvesting!

--
David in Normandy.
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Les haricots?

Just ordinary English runner beans. These are the variety 'Streamline'
as bought from Wilko's a number of years ago with large bean seeds that
are quite pretty shades of purple, blue and black. The skins on the
seeds are a bit too tough to make them nice to eat without removing them
first; but they come off easily after cooking and cooling.

I plan to try some simply tossed in a little butter next as a side
portion. I'm sure they'll be tasty. The texture as well as the taste is
similar to roasted chestnuts.

I'd better add the usual disclaimer here for beans, I think it applies
to all bean (seeds) ... that the boiling for half an hour is important
because it destroys a toxin in the beans which can otherwise make people
ill. Though I think it is only necessary to boil for ten or fifteen
minutes to destroy the toxin, the rest of the boiling time is simply to
cook / soften them.

--
David in Normandy.
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subject line, or it will be automatically deleted
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