Butterbeans!

Steve-o

I bought a pack of frozen butterbeans from Tesco, to keep as another vegetable staple to bulk out meals. The instructions say to boil for about 4 minutes, but they come out hard and dry. I've cooked them for 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and the last attempt was 25 minutes, but they always come out the same (although at 25 minutes a couple were starting to soften up).

I've never eaten them before so am I missing something, or is "hard and dry" a good description of how butterbeans are supposed to be?

EssexHebridean

Hmmm....sounds rather like these have somehow got into their packaging without being cooked first. Try defrosting a couple - they should, once they have thawed out, have a really soft texture - easily crushable between finger and thumb. If they are still as solid as they were when they came straight out of the freezer, back to Tesco with them!

oystercatcher

I've never used frozen butterbeans, tinned ones are very convenient. Normally I'd expect them to be very soft, like baked beans but bigger !!

I agree take them back if they seem so hard.

Oystercatcher

Steve-o

oystercatcher wrote: »

Normally I'd expect them to be very soft, like baked beans but bigger !!

Yup, that's how I expected them to be.

I defrosted 4 beans to see what they would be like unfrozen: 1 was very soft, and the other 3 were unsquishable!

I think I'm going to chalk this up as another crap Tesco's-own product. It's a shame that the only non-Tesco brand frozen veg they stock is Birdseye peas. :rolleyes:

Sparky67

It's much cheaper to do your own pulses - when you are about (they have to be boiled for quite a long time, and pre-soked), boil up a whole or half bag of dried pulses and freeze when cool. Break them up as they freeze so they aren't in one solid lump, then you can pour out as many as you need - and its a fraction of what the likes of Tesco charge for the ready boiled ones. Try with red kidney beans (good for adding to chillies, salads etc) chickpeas (general cooking, homeade hummous), butter beans (general cooking, butter bean mash etc).

Steve-o

Thanks Sparky, I'll try that.