I’ve eaten many beans and many kinds of beans. Sometimes when I go to kroger I buy one of each kind they have. Four of my favorite beans:
A very famous bean. If you do a google image search for “rice and beans”, more than half the pictures you see will be white rice and black beans. I think it is pretty bland and basic, which makes it work in many dishes. When I don’t know what bean to use, I use black.
Also called chickpeas. You can add a drained and rinsed can of chickpeas to a salad to make it more substantial. I mainly use chickpeas with tomatoes and Cumin+Turmeric+Paprika+Coriander for delicious curry-like stuff. Supposedly you can use the juice in the can as an egg substitute in chocolate mousse.
They come green and white; I’ve only ever eaten white.
I just learned now in my research for this post that a butter bean is actually a lima bean. Junie B Jones was wrong, these things are delicious! One butter bean probably weighs as much as and is as big as three black beans. Maybe it’s my brain playing tricks because the name, but I think these are creamy. They also absorb flavor and color really well. Some spices I don’t use with black beans because they disappear in the darkness, not a problem here. I recommend them for some shape variety.
Apparently this is also called the adzuki bean. Different from the kidney bean and the pinto bean! Pretty flavorful so good in chili. I ate some for lunch and dinner today.
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