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Dried Lima Beans
The beans should be soaked over night. Put in a covered vessel next day, and cook slowly, at least two hours. Season with salt, pepper and butter.
A bare-bones formula that assumes you already know how much water to use and how many beans feed a family. Dried limas are still sold as large "butter beans" or the smaller baby limas, and both work here.
- Quantity and yieldThe recipe names no amount. If you work from about 1 lb (roughly 2 1/2 cups) of dried limas, they will roughly double to triple in volume and give six to eight side-dish servings.
- SoakingCover with cold water by at least three inches, as the beans will swell considerably. Overnight on the counter is fine in a cool kitchen; refrigerate in warm weather so the soak water does not begin to ferment.
- The water level is the hinge"A covered vessel" and "cook slowly" mean a gentle simmer with the beans always submerged by an inch or two. Limas throw off a starchy foam and stick readily, so keep the heat low, stir occasionally, and top up with hot water rather than cold.
- Cooking timeTwo hours suits a stove holding a bare simmer. Soaked limas on a modern burner are usually tender in 45 to 75 minutes; baby limas can be done in 35. Test one rather than watching the clock.
- When to saltThe recipe seasons at the end, which is the traditional practice, on the old argument that salted water toughens large lima skins; this is disputed, and a light salting partway through improves the flavor without harm.
- Skins and foamSkim the grey foam in the first ten minutes. Large limas shed their skins as they soften; this is normal and not a fault.
- SeasoningSalt, pepper and butter is the whole intention, and it wants a generous hand with the butter, 3 to 4 tablespoons for a pound of beans. A little of the cooking liquid stirred in makes it cling.
- Pressure cookerIf you prefer, soaked limas take about 5 to 8 minutes at high pressure with a natural release, plus a spoonful of oil to control foaming.
Lima beans are a New World crop, domesticated in the Andes and in Mesoamerica long before European contact, and the name is generally traced to Lima, Peru, by way of the shipping trade. By the turn of the twentieth century American households kept them dried in the pantry alongside navy beans and split peas, and books of this kind gave them a paragraph rather than a page, presumably because the method needed little explaining: soak, simmer, butter. The terseness of the entry is itself informative. A cookbook of this period could assume a cook who judged water level and doneness by eye, and who had a stove that would hold a low fire unattended for an afternoon, which is exactly the condition dried beans want.