L egumes belong in the Fabaceae family and include beans, peas and lentils as well as many related plants, like peanuts, and a few you probably didn’t know were legumes, such as alfalfa, clover and lupins. When dried, beans, peas and lentils have a long shelf life. It’s as if they don’t have a use-by date. Archaeologists have found perfectly preserved seeds in Peru and Mexico dating back about 4000 years (they didn’t eat them, they put them in a museum).

Filling bellies, tasting good and keeping for a long time, this family hits the trifecta. So it was only natural that people would want to grow beans, peas, chickpeas and lentils. Millennia ago, our forebears planted out their seeds in the Old World and the New – where they also came up with a multi-cropping system, growing beans along with maize and winter squash in their fields. This both boosted plant productivity and enriched the soil.

Some beans don’t have to be cultivated. They grow on trees. Carob and mesquite pods are ripe for the picking. Mesquite, nowadays sold as a highly priced specialty organic flour, was a staple for North America’s desert Apache, Pima, Cahuilla, Maricopa, Yuma, Yavapai, Mohave, Hualapai, and Hopi tribes.

Plant scientist Peter Felker tells us in Mesquite Flour: New Life for an Ancient Staple that: ‘Many of the desert Cahuilla Indians of California stored the mesquite beans intact on the roofs of their dwellings in large elevated baskets woven of arrow weed or willow twigs and sealed with mud. The largest wicker baskets held ten to fifteen bushels each, a quantity sufficient to feed a family of six to ten people for a year. Some Maricopa Indians processed the pods before storage. Maricopa women pounded the pods into meal in a cottonwood or mesquite mortar, sifted the meal into fine and coarse grinds, and then poured the fine meal into an elliptical hole in the ground. The very hard seeds and the surrounding endocarp were usually discarded, as they were too difficult to grind and represented only about 10 per cent of each pod. Water was sprinkled onto the meal, layer by layer, a process that hardened the ground meal with its high sugar content into a firm, dry cake. The next day the women would remove the cakes from the hole. These cakes served as the long-term-storage form of the pods. Pieces were broken off and used for daily food preparation; they also served as dry rations for men going out to hunt.’

The bean family is a big, cosmopolitan family found on every continent except Antarctica. Although diverse – encompassing trees, shrubs, vines and herbs; food plants and flowering plants – it’s united by those familiar pods, typically with one to twelve seeds.

What we call ‘bean’, the Romans called ‘faba ’, and both words share a common ancestor in the Indo-European bhabh or bhabha , which means ‘swollen’ or ‘swelling’. We think whoever had the naming rights was spot on – beans are very generous providers, swelling up in the cooking pan with one cup of dried beans giving us two or three cups of cooked beans to serve up. Not only do beans make great partners, they bulk things out, thicken, add texture and colour, absorb flavours, and are nourishing, frugal extenders making a little go a very long way. It’s no wonder they appear in classic dishes around the world.

They also play a key role in fasting. The traditional Greek diet was influenced by the meatless-meals edict over Easter, Christmas, the Assumption of Mary and on Wednesday and Friday every week. That’s around 200 days a year when only beans, fruit, vegetables, nuts and bread can be consumed. This doesn’t sound like hardship. We think we could live very happily on such fare (accompanied by the Greek island that goes with it).

PROTEIN POWER

Beans, peas, chickpeas and lentils are packed with good things for good health, including slowly digested carbs, fibre, vitamins and minerals. What makes them stand out from the plant-food crowd is their protein – typically around 8–10 grams per ½ cup (100 g/3½ oz) cooked dried beans, peas or lentils (twice that of grains). If you don’t want to, you don’t need to eat meat, chicken and fish (or dairy) to top up your protein tank. However, you do need to make sure you’re eating a variety of plant foods every day (beans, whole grains, nuts and seeds) to get the essential amino acids you need.

WIND POWER

Beans are renowned for farts (and jokes), and the main culprits are large indigestible sugars (raffinose, stachyose and verbascose), which zip through the digestive system and arrive in the large bowel intact, where the resident healthy bacteria ferment them and feast. That embarrassing gas is a natural outcome.

You may well have discovered that some beans are windier than others and that some people suffer more than others. Certainly eating small amounts regularly helps the body acclimatise. As the indigestible sugars responsible are water soluble, rinsing them several times before soaking and cooking helps wash the sugars away, and the quick, hot-soak method (here ) leaches out the sugars more effectively than regular soaking.

A POT OF BEANS

There’s a welcome place for canned convenience for quick meals, but don’t shy away from buying dried beans and cooking them. It does take a bit of time and forethought. But you don’t have to stand around stirring; they just get on with it and come out soft and intact. The cooking water doubles as an aromatic stock for soups and stews – if you can handle the indigestible sugars.

THE FIXER

Our farming forebears didn’t know about nitrogen-fixing bacteria, but they did know that growing beans, peas and lentils put food on the table and helped other crops grow and thrive. Here’s how they do it. Plants need nitrogen to grow, make chlorophyll for photosynthesis and produce the flowers, fruits and seeds for new plants. Over thousands (probably millions) of years, beans, peas, lentils and other legumes have developed a special relationship with Rhizobium bacteria. These bacteria make themselves at home in root nodules, harvest nitrogen from the atmosphere (the plants can’t) and convert it into a form of nitrogen that the plants can make use of. When legumes are dug in, they decay into the soil releasing a form of nitrogen that other plants can draw on. That’s why they’re renowned as ‘nitrogen-fixing plants’, though Rhizobium bacteria do all the work.

Regular bean cookers and eaters suggest cooking up a batch and freezing some for another time, which is eminently sensible. The only trouble with preparing a large batch of beans is fermentation, particularly if you use the quick, hot-soak method. If you leave them in the fridge for too long they become rather whiffy and that’s when you need to bin them.

PREPARATION AND COOKING

CLEAN Pick through the dried beans, peas and lentils, discarding any discoloured or shrivelled ones and foreign matter such as tiny stones.

RINSE Always rinse them several times and then swirl them around in a bowl of cold water, discarding any floaters.

SOAK With the exception of split peas and lentils, all other legumes need soaking before cooking, one benefit being to speed up cooking time. Beans and peas will double or triple in size depending on which soaking method you choose, so it’s important to use a large enough vessel.

COLD SOAK Pour room temperature water over the beans to cover and soak for 8 hours or overnight. (In particular, chickpeas have a better flavour if soaked overnight.) Discard the soaking water and rinse the beans in fresh cool water. They will appear wrinkled after soaking and will fully hydrate during cooking.

QUICK, HOT SOAK The warmer the water the faster the beans absorb it. This method reduces cooking time and produces consistently tender legumes. Put them in a large saucepan and add 4 cups (1 litre/35 fl oz) of water for every 1 cup of beans. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat and gently simmer for 10 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat, cover and let stand for 1 hour. Drain and rinse with fresh cool water before cooking.

COOKING ON THE STOVETOP

For each 1 cup of legumes allow 3–4 cups (750 ml–1 litre/25½–35 fl oz) of water or stock. In general, for every 1 cup dried legumes you should get 2–2½ cups of cooked legumes. The cooking time will depend on the type.

COOKING IN THE PRESSURE COOKER

Many people have a thing about using pressure cookers, but they are a real time saver with beans and give a great result. When using a pressure cooker, use about 2½ cups of water (625 ml/21½ fl oz) per 1 cup of soaked beans and cook for about 20 minutes (following the manufacturer’s instructions). Make sure the pressure cooker is no more than half full of ingredients, including the cooking liquid.

WHAT BEAN IS THAT?

AFRICA

Black-eyed pea, cowpea, yard-long bean (Vigna unguiculata )

THE AMERICAS

Green bean, French bean, haricot bean, kidney bean, navy bean, pinto bean, black bean, borlotti bean, cannelloni bean, snap or string bean, frijoles (Phaseolus vulgaris )

Lima bean, butter bean, Madagascar bean (Phaseolus lunatus )

Runner bean (Phaseolus coccineus )

Lupin (tarwi) (Lupinus mutabilis )

EUROPE AND SOUTH-WEST ASIA

Chickpea, garbanzo bean, Bengal gram (Cicer arietinum )

Lentil (Lens culinaris )

Pea (Pisum sativum )

Broad bean, fava bean (Vicia faba )

Peanut, groundnut (Arachis hypogaea )

Lupin, white, yellow and sweet (Lupinus albus, L. luteus, L. angustifolius )

INDIA AND EAST ASIA

Soya beans (Glycine max )

Black gram, urd, woolly pyrol (Vigna mungo )

Mung bean, green gram, golden gram (Vigna radiata )

Adzuki bean (Vigna angularis )

Pigeon pea, red gram, Congo pea (Cajanus cajun )