A lot of people don’t know about Lupini beans. In fact my wife had never even heard of them until she got mixed up with me.
But humans have been eating Lupini beans for thousands of years; their remnants have been found in archeological sites in both ancient Rome and in the tombs of Egyptian Pharaohs.
We here in the stew eat Lupinis mostly during the holiday season (Thanksgiving through Christmas) but they’re available all year round. Their flavor is mostly vinegar and salt which comes from the brine they’re in but, like potato chips, you’ll find that you can’t only eat just one. But the really fun thing about Lupini beans is the way you eat them which I illustrate below.
Mixing Lupini beans in with marinated olives makes for an incredibly good holiday appetizer that looks real nice, is relatively inexpensive and super easy to make.
Now don’t even think about buying Lupini beans fresh and preparing them yourself, they are a bitter bean and it would take you a week to leech them out to the point where they’re edible, not to mention that if you don’t do it properly they can actually be toxic. Buy the already prepared Lupinis that come in jars and are usually found in the pickle aisle of your supermarket. Cento brand puts out an excellent Lupini product for under $ 2.00 for an 8 ounce jar.
WARNING – If you have any kind of nut allergy you should avoid Lupini beans.
Need This
1 – 8 ounce jars of Lupini beans in brine (Cento brand is good).
About 1/2 pound of olives in brine or oil (any variety or mixed)
1 orange
Do This
Open the jar of Lupini beans and dump them into a strainer or colander. Let them sit for a few minutes so that the brine drains off them (DO NOT RINSE THEM)
Get your olives into a glass bowl reserving their brine (or oil).
Mix the Lupini beans in with the olives.
Wash the orange under hot water.
Using a vegetable peeler, skim off about 10 strips of the orange peel, being careful to avoid as much of the white pith as possible. Save the rest of the orange for something else.
Julienne the orange peel, add it to the Lupini-olives along with 2 tablespoons (or more if you like) of the reserved olive brine.
Mix well. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour before serving.
Give it one more good mix before serving. Serve cold.
Good for 4 as an appetizer. My cost approx. $ 6.09 total.
HOW TO EAT LUPINI BEANS
The bean part of the Lupini is encased in a soft rubbery shell which is edible but unpleasantly chewy, so you’ll want to remove that soft shell from the bean. Here’s how you do it.
Take a bean and find the little mouth (see pic below). Hold the back side of the bean in between your thumbs and index fingers – both hands.
Using your front teeth, gently nip off the little mouth part. If there is someone sitting next to you go ahead and spit it at them… why not? You’re likely to get one spit back at ya but that’s okay, it’s all part of the fun of eating Lupini beans.
Now squeeze down on the back side of the bean with your fingers until the bean pops out of its shell and into your mouth.* Repeat.
*Always good to have at least one person around who knows how to do the Heimlich. GMN