Delicious Greek Style Beans | Rebel Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What beans do they eat in Greece? ›

Gigante beans (meaning Giant in Greek) are renowned for their buttery texture and unique flavour. Grown in Greece and populating in its cuisine, Gigante beans have a sweet taste but a meaty texture that can hold its own through cooking, making them perfectly creamy and tender, once slow roasted such as in this dish.

Those aromatics in the pot will revolutionize the beans' final flavor. The aromatics I tend to use are onions, carrots, garlic, and celery, and then heartier, woodsy herbs, like rosemary, sage, and thyme, which marry beautifully with the earthy-sweet flavor of beans.

Gigantes are not only filling but also super healthy: the beans are low in fat content and an excellent source of fiber (if you're looking to lower your cholesterol, these are for you!). Now you know why we've included these as part of our heart-healthy diet!

If you can't find gigantes from Greece at your local ethnic market, you can substitute large lima beans, elephant beans or butter beans. This dish takes some time to cook, but this method is very "hands off" so you can stick it in the oven and forget about it while you prepare the rest of your dinner.

Legumes such as alfalfa, green beans, clover, peanuts, lupines, peas, soybeans, broad beans, dry beans, chickpeas, dry peas, and lentils are important source of vegetable-based proteins and are important ingredients of many world-famous diet plans.

If you're wondering what is the secret ingredient for restaurant-quality refried beans, the answer is fat. Restaurant-made refried beans honor traditional Mexican culinary practices by adding a hearty helping of lard or bacon fat drippings to their recipe.

Toss drained/rinsed/dried beans with a bit of olive oil (or avocado oil) and your favorite seasonings. You can add crushed whole seeds (coriander, cumin, fennel, mustard, etc.), woodsy herbs (thyme, oregano, rosemary, sage), red pepper flakes, crushed garlic cloves, and of course salt and pepper.

The Greeks had some strange superstitions about food – some wouldn't eat beans as they thought they contained the souls of the dead!

Which bean is a Superfood? ›

According to healthline, garbanzo beans (chickpeas), lentils, peas, kidney beans, and black beans rank as the top five healthiest beans. These varieties tend to be the highest in fiber, folate and protein, and are the most effective at mitigating post-meal blood sugar spikes.

Gigante beans are essentially large lima beans (also known as butter beans), but they are a little different from the varieties you'd find on the shelves in the US. And that's because they are grown in Greece, in the northwest of the country in regions like Prespes.

Why Giant White Beans Are the Heartiest Beans Around. I am referring to these meaty beans as simply giant white beans, as they fall under many different names. The Italians call them corona beans; the Greeks call them gigante beans. You'll also sometimes find them labeled as butter beans.

They're creamy an toothsome, with a mild flavor that easily takes on the ingredinets that the beans are served with (or marinated in!). I found my Gigante beans online, but many retailers offer them, although they may be called Greek Giant Beans, Borad Beans, or Greek Fava Beans.

Broad beans – Broad, or Fava Beans are rare in archeological sites, but are common in classical literature. They were eaten both as main dishes and also included in desserts (mixed with figs). In addition to describing them as food, classical authors attribute various medicinal qualities to the beans.

Together with wheat, beans of all kinds, along with lentils, chickpeas and split peas, form the very foundation of the Greek diet and have done so since Neolithic times. Over the centuries, let alone the millennia, country cooks devised dozens of ways of preparing them.

One rule that could never be broken was the edict to refrain from eating beans. This stemmed partially from the Pythagorean precept that each person should strive for tranquillity and peace, savoring the harmony which mirrored the harmony of the heavens, the outer boundaries of the universe.