I first unveiled these giant pickled beans to my admiring extended family two Christmas / Hanukkah / Winter Solstices ago, as a curiosity and appetizer.
“Where in hell did you get those enormous fucking beans?” my brother-in-law’s brother wanted to know.
“Well, I belong to this bean club,” I explained. There, was a long, considering silence.
“Of course you do,” said my B.I.L.B. I might have blushed; I’m not sure. I can’t really tell.
“Well, they’re good,” he admitted, and they did all go down the hatch pretty quickly. Like all pickled things, they went particularly well with beer and white spirits like gin and vodka. “Can I join the bean club?” he asked me later.
I had to tell him, with just a dash of schadenfreude, that I didn’t think they were accepting new members. And they were sold out on the web site. But not to worry, new giant beans would soon be pushing their way out of the earth. That’s what the Winter Solstice is all about.
He didn’t look really convinced. But honestly, you have to be careful what you wish for. I’ve been a member of the Rancho Gordo Bean Club for a good while now. It’s nice to know I will never again go beanless, but I do get a strange, hollow nervousness when I see how many of their packages have accumulated in my pantry.
There’s a German word for this sensation too, or there could be. If you type Bohnepanik into an online translator, you’ll have your answer: Bean Panic. It’s a feeling of dread that settles on your soul when you realize you have to cook at least two pounds of beans a week in order to clear the decks for the next bean club shipment.
One of the many things you can do when you have a ton of beans is pickle them. This works particularly well with these giant Royal Corona beans, which are a little starchy, and hold their shape and their skins very well throughout the cooking process. Once laid up in a jar in your fridge, they’ll last for weeks, ready for instant duty in your snacks and salads.
Eaters, you seriously need to pickle some beans. You can use ordinary gigantes or smaller limas to the same general effect as these Polish monsters. It’s kid simple, and they need no more dressing than a jot of extra vinegar and a tittle of olive oil, drooled on at the end. These starchy, toothsome beans plus sharp, sweet peppadews and crispy-fried, salty halloumi are my own perfect trio, but the entire salad world awaits. You don’t need a holiday to get your beans pickled.
Recipe: Giant Pickled Beans with Peppadews and Halloumi
Get your beans pickled and add some crisply fried halloumi cheese and sweet, spicy peppadews.
-Full Post-
Cook dried beans according to package directions or your preference, but add no salt, and do not overcook. Cool and drain beans, and rinse well. Pack the beans into a sealable jar large enough to hold them easily, interspersed with the rings of red onion. Bring the water, vinegar, spices, salt and sugar to a boil, stirring to dissolve the salt and sugar. Pour the liquid over the beans and onion while still hot. Seal the jar when cool, then let stand at room temperature overnight. Refrigerate the next day, and keep refrigerated.
To make the salad, slice the cheese about 3/8" thick, and saute in 2 tsp olive oil until nicely browned on both sides, about 6 or 8 minutes. Cool and cut into strips. In a large bowl, gently toss the cheese, peppadews and beans with the vinegar, then toss once again with the remaining 1/4 cup of olive oil. Serve as is or on lettuce leaves, garnished with the pickled red onion slices, as an appetizer or salad side dish.
These recipe quantities will work fine, but you don't really need them. For any given quantity of beans you want to pickle, just set them up in a jar, add water to cover generously, then pour the water out into a measuring cup. Note the number of milliliters - for example, the 2 cups in the recipe is around 500 ml. Replace half the water with vinegar, and make a 5% percent brine by dividing the number of milliliters by 20, then weighing out that many grams of salt. Then add three times as much sugar, also by weight.
A digital scale that can zero out and read in both ounces and grams is a beautiful thing. Two tablespoons of Diamond Crystal kosher salt weigh about 25 grams, but the same quantity of fine sea salt may weigh almost twice as much, resulting in a very salty 8% or 9% brine. If you intend to pickle a lot - and you should - weighing in grams is the way to go.
Salty halloumi cheese, crisped up in a skillet or grilled, is a great addition here but so would be feta, queso fresco or creamy Greek manouri. (Did you know that manouri is to feta as ricotta is to mozzarella?)
Ingredients
Directions
Cook dried beans according to package directions or your preference, but add no salt, and do not overcook. Cool and drain beans, and rinse well. Pack the beans into a sealable jar large enough to hold them easily, interspersed with the rings of red onion. Bring the water, vinegar, spices, salt and sugar to a boil, stirring to dissolve the salt and sugar. Pour the liquid over the beans and onion while still hot. Seal the jar when cool, then let stand at room temperature overnight. Refrigerate the next day, and keep refrigerated.
To make the salad, slice the cheese about 3/8" thick, and saute in 2 tsp olive oil until nicely browned on both sides, about 6 or 8 minutes. Cool and cut into strips. In a large bowl, gently toss the cheese, peppadews and beans with the vinegar, then toss once again with the remaining 1/4 cup of olive oil. Serve as is or on lettuce leaves, garnished with the pickled red onion slices, as an appetizer or salad side dish.
These recipe quantities will work fine, but you don't really need them. For any given quantity of beans you want to pickle, just set them up in a jar, add water to cover generously, then pour the water out into a measuring cup. Note the number of milliliters - for example, the 2 cups in the recipe is around 500 ml. Replace half the water with vinegar, and make a 5% percent brine by dividing the number of milliliters by 20, then weighing out that many grams of salt. Then add three times as much sugar, also by weight.
A digital scale that can zero out and read in both ounces and grams is a beautiful thing. Two tablespoons of Diamond Crystal kosher salt weigh about 25 grams, but the same quantity of fine sea salt may weigh almost twice as much, resulting in a very salty 8% or 9% brine. If you intend to pickle a lot - and you should - weighing in grams is the way to go.
Salty halloumi cheese, crisped up in a skillet or grilled, is a great addition here but so would be feta, queso fresco or creamy Greek manouri. (Did you know that manouri is to feta as ricotta is to mozzarella?)