a better bean

Why we’re up for a new take on butter beans

- SHERI CASTLE

Fresh butter beans are high on my list of favorite vegetable standouts.They are so irresistible that I'm willing to stain and scuff up the sides of my thumbs to liberate a mess from their pods, even though I can usually find baggies of shelled butter beans at local farmers markets and produce stands. I love the meaty speckled varieties that look like polished creek pebbles glinting in the summer sun.

I'm smitten by the jade green ones no larger than a dime or, as some would say, "about the size of a squirrel's ear." Whether speckled or green, butter beans are members of the lima bean family. Gosh, I really hate to hear that. The memories of ruinously cooked lima beans dissuade some people from trying butter beans at all, guilt by grim association. Perhaps Southern gardeners started using the term "butter beans" to give their beloved legumes a fresh start under an assumed name. It's more likely that fresh butter beans earned the name by being so dainty and tender that they practically melt like butter in our mouths.

There are other beans around the world and perhaps in our pantries that are also identified as butter beans, namely those ginormous white dried beans, which have their own appeal, but they are by no means what Southerners are talking about when we laud fresh butter beans. We know our good thing when we see it, summer after summer. We strategically eat all we can while they're in season and stock the freezer with enough to tide us over the rest of the year.

Many of us were raised on butter beans prepared only the traditional way, seasoned with pork and cooked until creamy, and they are delicious. But butter beans are willing and able to be spruced up and lightened in recipes that provide fresh inspiration for enjoying them, if not giving them a go for the first time.

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