Please help me find a way to like beans and pulses!

RachelW1987

How about bean burgers? Falafels. you can put anything you like in them and then have some veg on the side.

I love bean burgers, you could do mexican bean burgers too.

How about chilli with kidney beans and chick peas in?

Hope this helps

mummysaver

Do you eat soup at all? That's quite a good way of adding pulses to your diet, a handful of lentil chucked in just thickens it really and they melt away to almost nothing, other pulses could be added as you fancied.

Beans are good in salads, blanched french beans, sweetcorn, kidney beans and whatever else takes your fancy is nice with a vineagrette dressing.

Also pulses can be added to mince, a handful of lentils can make 500g go that bit further and not really affect the taste, especially if you're making chilli or bolognese (sorry don't know if you eat this if you don't eat pasta?)

Hummous is lovely and can be made with other beans as well as chickpeas, my kids love it with toasted pittas to dip.

If you like risotto then you can do the same dish but replace the rice with pearl barley, think it's called orzotto if you want to google it. Pearl barley is also great added to stews.

I made a spicy stew earlier today with involved potatoes, chick peas, onions, tomatoes, lentils, carrots and butternut squash, with a dollop of tagine paste and a bit of harissa - though if you don't like cooked veg much then stew might be your nightmare meal! Guess you could do a similar dish with just chickpeas, pots, and tomatoes. I serve it with couscous, again don't know if you eat this as it's little tiny bits of pasta really, but it goes equally well with bulghar wheat.

A bulghar wheat salad is also good, just pour boiling water over the bulghar, leave to expand and then add lots of herbs and lemon juice, bit of garlic and any raw veg or beans you fancy, great to keep in the fridge as something to pick at all day!

Hope you find some suggestions you like, I'm sure someone will come along with some links to pulses and beans threads before long and you might find more ideas than you know what to do with!

Stephen_Leak

Obviously, Chilli con Carne, with red kidney beans. We can also do a Chilli Bean Soup, which is basically CCC minus the meat and blended. Plus a Three Bean Salad. Recipes can be posted on request.

PS. Don't forget the good old baked bean.

Gingham_Ribbon

You could try making soup with red lentils or split peas as a base. You're still getting all the nutrients from them but they won't be recognisable as 'pulses'. Have a look at Rose Elliot's Bean Book for ideas too.

ChapelGirl

Keep an eye out for tins of "Cassegrain" beans and pulses in your local supermarkets.

If you can find them, the cooked lentils are really yummy, and a good way to break you into lentils gently! Just pour into a pan and reheat. The tins are sort-of square, not round (a bit like a taller version of a sardine tin) and the label is mostly a grass-green colour.

Normally I'd say cook your beans and pulses from scratch, as it's cheaper and you know what you are putting in, but we always have a tin of these in the store cupboard for nights when we don't have a lot of time to cook. They go really well with a grilled chicken leg.

Another thing you could do is buy a tin of chick peas, drain and give them a quick blitz in a food processor with a squeeze of lemon, about 2 tablespoons of good oil, salt, pepper and crushed garlic to taste. Home-made hummous. Very quick, tasty, and cheap.

Patchwork_Quilt

I have to say that hummous is divine with chips, but that's probably not very slimming ...

maryb

I know exactly where you are coming from, I can't stand the mealy taste of beans having been force fed them at school. However as lots of people have pointed out, hummous is lovely, you wouldn't know it's chickpeas, and the other thing that I find helpful is to use "soup mix" which is a mix of different beans and pulses. Fry an onion and add a generous teaspoon of curry powder then stir in some soup mix and some stock and simmer until tender. The curry powder makes a huge difference and makes the soup mix taste meaty instead of mealy. I also find that cooking my own red kidney beans for use in chilli is nicer than using tinned. I cook a whole bag of them in one go in the pressure cooker and freeze them in small portions. This works for me because I find a whole tin, even a small one, too beany but I can cope with about half a tin's worth and this way there's no waste.

Hope this helps

GarryJ68

EssexGirl wrote: »

Ok, this is really embarrassing to admit, but I'm a complete "bean-o-phobe" and I need to change my diet to include more wholefoods and such. The problem is that although I love my veggies, I love them raw and hate them cooked, the only cooked veggies I eat are peas and potatoes.
I also don't eat pasta ( I was force fed it at primary school and I can't bring myself to even touch it now) and am allergic to cheese but not other dairy.

I need to follow a lower GI diet because of my PCOS, as I've been following Weight Watchers and, honestly speaking, I can and do use up my daily points allowance on junk :eek:, I DO eat healthy low fat foods, but once the good food has been eaten, the rest is junk.

Can anyone recommend any recipes for things that may be easy for my pallette? I bought some red beans and some chick peas today, both tinned.

I'm sorry to sound like a baby, I'm not keen on trying new foods, and it's me that does the cooking, so the family tend to get meals that I like. Meat and veggies, stir fries, fish etc. They only get to eat pasta when I'm working late lol.

Cheese - it works with colliflour...lol

katylou6180

Hi, I know what you mean and I don't really care for them myself! I saw by your post you ate meat, I don't know whether you ever boil bacon(you know...joint of bacon or gammon-sling in saucepan and leave simmering till cooked) as I am on the "moneysaving" tack as well as I have been made redundant! I have found that doing that for the "meat" as part of a main meal (either roast + accompaniments or cauli cheese etc) works well one night, and I am also fighting a neverending battle to lose weight! Then leave the water that bacon boils in(skim fat off of course) and reserve a little bacon, next day chuck in chopped reserved bacon to stock, add a carrot lurking in fridge, a spud, and those horrible beans/lentils/soup mix and leave to boil! Serve with carb of your choice(mine being a roll or small portion of mash) and the whole soup/stew thing tastes lovely...not a taste of 'orrible beans in sightand getting a few of your five

Stephen_Leak

Gingham_Ribbon wrote: »

You could try making soup with red lentils or split peas as a base. You're still getting all the nutrients from them but they won't be recognisable as 'pulses'. Have a look at Rose Elliot's Bean Book for ideas too.

I agree.

The Chilli Bean Soup I mention above is like this and also as the chilli to mask any taste. I can also do a simple Lentil Soup which, if fully blended, has an absolutely beautiful velvety texture.

Oh, and whilst we weren't on the subject, parsley (either fresh or dried) is said to counteract any possible anti-social side effects of eating all these beans!