I purchased a jar of these lovely Lupini beans in brine at Home Goods, thinking they’d make for a great appetizer.
I don’t think I’ve ever had them. Do people eat them ‘as is,’ or are there other uses for them that I am not aware of?
They are served/eaten as a (beer) snack in Portugal. Your jar is small, probably also for snacking. No idea how Italians use them.
You can add them to a salad. I would eat them alongside olives and pickled garlic, and beer. Remove the membrane, if you prefer. Just make a bigger opening by biting or tearing, then pop/squeeze the bean into your mouth.
1 Like
I don’t know about small — that’s 550g total weight.
You can’t eat the skins? 
Edible but a bit thick.
1 Like
Ah. TBH, that sounds like a bit of a PITA for a snack food.
Maybe I can gift them to someone I don’t like 
1 Like
Snack in some Italian restaurants (in the US and Italy) a remove the skin and just pop it in your mouth (similar to edamame).
2 Likes
Lupini beans not in brine:
Needed tahini and tired of getting ripped off by the big chains, so I hit the Turkish store on the way home from church. Decided to look for dried cannellini, too, as I haven’t been able to find them anywhere.
Saw these little dried beans I’d never heard of before (Lupini) and did a quick google to see if they’d be a good sub for fava or chickpeas in hummus - google says yes.
I was getting ready to soak them when I decided I should read some recipes to be sure they’d be a 1-1 mass swap. And they pretty much are… but unlike most of the chickpea or fava recipes I’ve used, not one recipe out of the 6 or 8 I skimmed considered starting with dried lupini.
Turns out they can be pretty toxic without a lengthy prep process and if I’d simply prepped as I would other dried beans, I’d have gotten pretty sick. Live-n-learn-n-live!
I’ll let you know how it all turns out in about 10 days…
2 Likes
I made this lupini bean hummus. It’s really good, my wife and oldest daughter love it (other kids haven’t been home recently enough to try). I think it’s better than chickpea hummus, which to me has some edge to it (bitter?) that seems like it loads more and more after the first few bites.
I did the soak-soak-soak, boil, then soak-soak-soak for another 10 days, water changing twice a day. Once I got the routine habitualized so I didn’t have to think about it, it was fine.
I followed Serious Eats recipe for regular hummus and simply subbed the soaked lupins (peeled) for chickpeas. I did find some lupini-specific recipes, but they were mainly old blog posts and weren’t very clear, and in some ways seemed too weird to trust. E.g., “leave the skins on!” - I test blended some in my daughter’s Ninja and the skins made for a really rough presentation. I also tried cooking one batch with the SE suggested mirepoix and one without, and really could not tell the difference - I think because the lupin skins are so meaty compared to chick pea.
Within the above there’s a linked recipe for a tahini-lemon sauce to use. I use the amounts suggested but don’t waste the garlic solids; I microplane and just let them sit in the lemon juice for a while, then start mixing the garlic-lemon into the tahini (vs their instruction to add tahini to the juice, which causes a lot more seizing up of the tahini).
The bowl atop is some of the of the skins. I’m going to see if I can powderize them (lots of protein and fiber) and maybe test it out in a small batch GF bread. Meanwhile, every time I walk by the island I put my hand in there and rustle them around. It’s sort of calming. I bet a very pliable ball product filled with the dried skins would sell well.
I’ve got a huge bowl of the other 1.5 pounds soaking at day 10 in a 2% brine. I’ve got a bunch of friends over coming Friday night and will have them out for snacks. Curious to see if anyone will know what they are - one guy is a 2nd-gen Sicilian-American, so I’m betting on him.
1 Like
I find regular hummus terribly boring, but this is intriguing…. especially since I still have a bunch of those left in the jar.
Apologies if I missed it, but did you peel them before blending them for another batch? Was the product similar to fava?
Oh, yes. Sorry, I used about 1.7 pounds of soaked, peeled beans for the actual hummus I made (trying to match the SE recipe, which called for starting with 8 oz of dried chick peas, usually for me which makes about 1.7 pounds once soaked and cooked).
That minor amount of unpeeled lupins I made were a mess once blenderized. I ate them with just some additional salt and butter, but would not want that texture in a hummus.
I would compare the lupin hummus to fava. Pretty similar, but different flavors. I really prefer the nutty buttery flavor of the lupin first, the fava second, the chickpea is a distant third for flavor for me.
1 Like
