British names for American pulses

oldMcDonald

I have a couple of American vegetarian cookbooks and I was wondering if anyone here can give me a hand working out what these beans are known as over this side of the pond

Navy beans
White beans - think these are butter beans?
Limas
Red beans - are these Kidney beans? They also mention kidney beans so not sure
Pigeon Peas
Great Northern beans
Black beans

Anyone have any ideas?

Pink.

Hi oldMcDonald,

This thread may help: American cookery terms (merged threads)

I'll add your thread to that one later when you've hopefully had some replies.

Pink

Beebop

Having checked out my American culinary translation book, this is what I found:

Navy beans - a.k.a Yankee bean
White beans - generic term for several bean types, inc. marrow beans, great northern beans, navy beans and pea beans
limas - butter beans
Red beans - kidney beans
Pigeon peas - a.k.a no-eyed pea, congo bean, goongoo bean and gandule
Great northern beans - no idea
Black beans - turtle bean

So basically, I'm not sure what you could substitute the ones we can't get over here for, but I hope this helps a bit!

thriftlady_2

Navy beans are haricot beans -the kind used in baked beans. I think Great Northern beans are very similar -maybe a bit bigger like cannellini beans -definitely a white bean. I would say that navy and great northern beans are pretty much interchangeable.

Lima beans are butter beans.

Have you tried Google images? It's great for finding out what foreign ingredients are. I use it when translating French recipes.

lilibeth

Here is a chart with pictures.
It's a bit rubbish I did see a better one ages ago I'm still trying to find it for you.
http://www.all-creatures.org/recipes/i-beans.html
and another
http://journals.aol.com/spahealinghands/prasadam-cooking/entries/2007/10/11/grains-pulses-legumes/2119 (scroll down for the pics)




Ok this one is a lot better and has the pictures and that ALTERNATE names (I'm still trying to find the big big chart with pics for you)
http://missvickie.com/howto/beans/beanframe.html

lilibeth

OK here
Alternate names and pics (don't click on anything just scroll past the text at the top)
http://www.recipes4us.co.uk/Dried_Beans_and_Peas.htm#Types_of_Dried_Peas_

oldMcDonald

Thank you so much, everyone:)

The links are really helpful. It didn't even occour to me to google images!

Thamks agaid

blueberrypie

There is a great site called Cook's Thesaurus - it covers all sorts of food items and gives descriptions and alternative names as well as what you can use to substitute for them. It has a very thorough section on beans/pulses at http://www.foodsubs.com/Beans.html

oldMcDonald

oldMcDonald wrote: »

Thamks agaid

That should have said 'Thanks again'! I only just noticed what rubbish I managed to type yesterday

Nicki

oldMcDonald wrote: »

I have a couple of American vegetarian cookbooks and I was wondering if anyone here can give me a hand working out what these beans are known as over this side of the pond

Navy beans
White beans - think these are butter beans?
Limas
Red beans - are these Kidney beans? They also mention kidney beans so not sure
Pigeon Peas
Great Northern beans
Black beans

Anyone have any ideas?

Black beans are black beans! I've never seen them dried in a UK supermarket but you can certainly get them tinned in both Sainsburys and Tesco. They are usually with the other tinned beans but sometimes they are with the ethnic foods, either with the chinese or the mexican foods.

As others have said:

Navy - haricot
white beans - you could safely use any white bean
lima - butter beans
red beans - US seem to use these to refer both to kidney beans and also to a smaller reddish bean, whose name escapes me but which I have seen in the supermarket very occasionally. If you google red bean, you should come up with references to recipes using both types, and I guess look at your own recipe and see which one looks more appropriate. Or it wouldn't be the end of the world to use the wrong bean by accident I shouldn't think!
Never heard of pigeon peas but they sound fascinating!

baby_fuzz

oldMcDonald wrote: »

I have a couple of American vegetarian cookbooks and I was wondering if anyone here can give me a hand working out what these beans are known as over this side of the pond

Navy beans
White beans - think these are butter beans?
Limas
Red beans - are these Kidney beans? They also mention kidney beans so not sure
Pigeon Peas
Great Northern beans
Black beans

Anyone have any ideas?

Have you tried a Chinese or Asian supermarket? A lot of the wholesale cash and carries are pretty good for these things.
http://shop.waiyeehong.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=637
But, just a word of warning, be careful when shopping for black beans, because salted preserved beans are also black beans. The ones at the link above are dried black beans, not preserved.