Your Favorite Types of Beans?

What are your favorite types of beans?

If you live in Massachusetts, maybe it's Boston Baked Beans served in a sturdy ceramic bean pot. If you are one of our neighbors here in Arizona, your choice is probably pintos, refried and rolled in a tortilla with salsa and guacamole.

From Texas Chili to Ham Hocks and Beans in Missouri to adzuki beans in Japan, each region in the world has its own favorites.

In the Mediterranean, beans are used in many different ways. Here's a site all about Greek food and culture, including their creative and delicious uses of beans and pulses. (pulses refers to annual legume crops grown only for their dried seeds. This excludes vegetables such as green beans and peas.)

Each of the types of beans comes with its own unique flavors and cooking characteristics. Recipes for each variety abound.

This page will introduce you to a variety of beans and some of their uses. You may well wind up with a new first choice.

We hope you will contact us about your favorite bean and why you like it.

Or, if you have a favorite recipe for these beans or any other bean, we would love to hear from you. Please go to our Bean Recipe page and share your dish with us and our readers. Your recipe will appear on its very own page where your friends can comment on and rate it.

We are offering a short list of popular types of beans. We hope you will help us grow this list!

Pinto Beans: The most popular bean of the Southwest! Our Personal Fav!!! The famous frijole of burritos and a vital part of TexMex, Mexican and Southwest cuisine.

Green Beans: The unripe pod of any bean, runner beans - bush beans - pole beans. Important in dishes from China to Nebraska and from church supper casseroles to Haute Cuisine.

Kidney Beans: You'll find kidney beans in favorite recipes from Creole red beans and rice to Texas Chili.

White Beans: White beans describe a variety of common beans from Cannellini to Great Northern. These versatile white beans are used in favorite recipes from salads to soups to baked.

Navy Beans: While most noted in the United States as "the bean that fed the fleet", this little bean can be used in Boston Baked beans or any of variety of white beans recipes.

Great Northern / Pea Beans: Another Phaseolus vulgaris or common bean often lumped with other white beans. Most commonly found in Boston Baked Beans, these types of beans are interchangeable with Navy, Rainy River or any other similar bean in many recipes.

Lima Beans: Sometimes called Butter Beans. This native of the South American Andes is widely popular in country cooking in the Southeastern region of the USA.

Black Beans: The go-to alternative to pinto beans in Mexican food. This great bean is featured in classic Brazilian recipes like feijado. These are also great in Southwestern bean salads.

Chickpeas aka Garbanzo Beans: This Old World legume is as well known for its versatility as it is for nutrition. Used in recipes around the world, chickpeas are eaten either green and raw or dried and cooked and have been used to make flour and coffee.

Black-eyed Peas aka Cowpeas: Steeped in tradition, this little bean is featured in traditional recipes symbolizing good luck for the New Year in such dishes as Hoppin' John and ruvia, one of the nine dishes served during Rosh Hashanah.

Lentils: Indian Comfort Food - Eating lentils on the Indian sub-continent is like eating frijoles in Mexico or feijoada in Brazil. Nutritious and prepares quickly with no soaking.

Adzuki Beans: Guide to adzuki beans - nutritious, delicious food and gentle, natural skin care. Famous in China and Japan for confections.

Soybeans: An ancient bean from the Orient, this powerhouse of protein is made into sauce, miso, tofu, tempeh, and eaten fresh as edamame.

Mung Beans: Most familiar as bean sprouts, but enjoyed in multiple ways from soups to sweets to spicy moog dahl

Broad Beans: A guide to broad beans, aka fava beans, as a versatile, traditional food. This ancient bean is an integral part of cuisines around the world.

Mesquite Beans: A hardy,protein-rich native of American deserts. This nutritious food, once a staple of Native Americans, is enjoying a comeback in the world of healthy eating. A great food source and one of the types of beans generally found only in the wild.

Carob: With historic connections to Imperial Rome, the Talmud, and the Old Testament, this wild food source is well worth a look. Too often used as a not-so-successful substitute for chocolate, we urge you to try carob for its own unique flavors.

Tepary Beans: Truly a desert native, this little bean was one of the dietary staples of the Tohono O'Odham people of Arizona and Northern Mexico. Drought resistant and nutritious with an extremely low glycemic index, this bean is well worth growing, drying, and enjoying in your diet.

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