Home › Vegetables › Red Kidney Beans (Swedish Method)
Red Kidney Beans (Swedish Method)
Put 1 quart of beans into cold water; add 1 teaspoonful salt and cook until tender. Then add 2 tablespoonfuls of syrup, and thicken with 1 tablespoonful of potato flour, and corn starch diluted in water. Stir over the fire until the liquid is of a creamy consistency, and serve. These are also palatable when cold.
A plain sweet-and-starchy bean dish in the Swedish style, closer to bruna bönor than to anything in the American baked-bean line. The whole thing hinges on cooking the beans fully soft before any sweetener goes in.
- Quantity and yieldA quart of dry beans is roughly 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 lb, which cooks up to somewhere around 10 to 12 cups — eight to ten servings. Halve it unless you want the cold leftovers the recipe recommends.
- Soak firstThe recipe says only to start the beans in cold water and does not mention soaking. Unsoaked, expect roughly 1 1/2 to 2 hours; soaked overnight, 45 to 60 minutes.
- Add sugar only at the endSyrup and any acid slow the softening of bean skins considerably. The recipe is right to hold the syrup back until the beans are tender, and it is worth being strict about it.
- SaltOne teaspoon for a quart of beans is light by modern taste. Salt to taste after cooking rather than doubling it at the start.
- "Syrup"In Scandinavian cooking this points to Swedish table syrup, either light (ljus sirap) or dark (mörk sirap), the nearest equivalents being Lyle's or a mild molasses. Two tablespoons in this volume gives only a faint sweetness; many Swedish versions use more, often with a splash of vinegar for balance.
- Potato flourSold today as potato starch. It thickens fast, sets glossy, and thins out if boiled hard — bring the pot to a simmer, stir in the slurry, and take it off within a minute or two.
- Thickening slurryMix the starches with cold water until smooth before they go near the pot, and add gradually; a quart of beans needs far less thickener than it looks, since the bean liquor is already starchy.
- ServingTraditionally eaten hot alongside salt pork, ham or meatballs. Cold, it firms into something closer to a bean salad and benefits from extra vinegar.