BEAN Smart
By Rowann Gilman
Posted May 5, 2015

It’s almost summer. Greenmarkets, supermarkets and farm stands are starting to strut the season’s bounty. That’s great, but we don’t want to talk about it. We want to talk about beans: not the green kind, but the bag of dried ones hiding out in the far reaches of your pantry. Why beans in summer?

No one feels much like cooking when it’s hot, so fast-food temptations are harder to resist. Pizza, ice-cream, hot dogs, fries and snack foods are so easy to have at hand. Overdo it and you’ve knocked your nutritional balance way off kilter. Amazingly, beans can provide everything you need to stay healthy, keep up your energy and keep down weight gain. Not only that, it’s a no-brainer to put together a light summer bean salad with a minimum of cooking, and they cost almost nothing. The fact is that cooked dried beans are a sky-high source of fiber and low-fat protein (which also makes them a boon for vegetarians and vegans who may not get enough of those nutrients). Beans will supply you with almost all of the vitamins and minerals your body needs, especially now when it’s working harder in the heat. Potassium, folic acid, iron, B6, riboflavin, selenium and thiamine are just a few. And as we should all know by now, those are the ingredients that enhance longevity, reducing heart and some cancer risks, and helping to manage insulin resistance and diabetes, among other conditions. On average, one cup of cooked, dried beans is a mere 249 calories with a just 5 of them coming from fat, plus a whopping 45 percent of dietary fiber and 17 grams of protein.

The prep? Before you go to bed, put the beans in a bowl and cover with water by about 2 inches and let them sit there overnight (they’ll double or triple in size and look a little wrinkly in the morning). When you get up, drain the beans, toss the soaking water, rinse well and proceed with your recipe. The salad recipe below, like most bean dishes, are very versatile: it can stand on its own as a light lunch with some nice crusty bread, or you can add some shrimp or other fish to make a complete dinner of it. You can also use canned beans if you miss the overnight soak. One more thing: about “that.” It’s the overnight soaking of the beans that breaks down the compounds that cause “that.” The longer they soak, the more those compounds dissipate.

Click below for one of my favorite summer bean recipes, adapted with permission from Raising the Salad Bar, Lake Isle Press:

White Bean & Asparagus Salad