Add fresh broad beans to a mixed salad for a special crunchy treat. It is a saying in our family that ‘broad beans make a salad’. They also make a fine vegetable or addition to a soup (Brown Windsor).
- The trick with broad beans is to pick them and eat them young. By the time the part of the bean attaching it to the pod goes black the bean is old, the sugar has gone starchy and the bean is chewy and the kids won’t want to eat them.
- Pick them whilst the bean is still growing and they will be sweet and tender with soft skins.
- Sow varieties like Green Windsor or the short podded organic Witkiem Manita (new to me) for flavour
- Eat ‘pods and all’ from varieties The Sutton and Stereo as you would mangetout
- White and green seeded varieties differ little in flavour but I have a preference for the green ones as the others remind me of school butterbeans (which were really lima beans).
- Heirloom varieties include Bunyards Exhibition, Masterpiece Green Longpod, The Sutton and Aquadulce Claudia.
- Black fly can be a problem at the tip of the plant so if you are organic pinch it out tops at the first sign.
- Tall varieties will need some string support between canes at the end of rows
- Late sowings in August can produce tender green tops for a stir fry
Longpod beans were fed to horses and were the origin of frisky horses being ‘full of beans”
We eat a great deal of Broad Beans or Butter Type Beans here in France and I absolutely love them.
Both summer and winter, I do not mind either, especially in a thick soup or with Cassoulet.
I am making myself hungry just thinking about it