This Week: Foods that aren’t universally liked :-) - featuring Lima Beans and Brussels Sprouts!
(If you would like to be on or off of this weekly cooking thread ping-list, please send a private message.)
-JT
On the Lima beans. Add sausage and put in a cooked winter squash. Or spaghetti squash. Yum and I gre up hating limas.
Ya know what else frosen baby Lima beans are good for? Ice packs! They don’t thaw too quickly, and conform wo the curves, etc., in your body. I keep two one pound packs in my fridge for just this purpose! And they’re tasty too!
I snip up a piece of bacon along with my lima beans. Yum!
I’ve always liked brussel sprouts, too. I usually just steam them & then add butter with salt & pepper. The only tip I’ve ever heard for those that don’t care for them is to add a teaspoon of sugar to the water you steam them in. I guess it takes off what some perceive as a bitter taste. Never bothered me, though.
Like Brussel Sprouts....
HATE Lima Beans....
Another simple recipe for those that don’t like their sprouts plain...
Brussels Sprouts Gratin
Ingredients:
2 lbs Brussels sprouts, trimmed & halved
3 tbsp melted butter
1 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 cup breadcrumbs
¼ cup Swiss cheese, finely shredded
1 cup heavy cream
Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Place sprouts in a 13 x 9-inch baking dish & toss with 2 tbsp of the melted butter. Spread evenly in the pan & roast for 25 to 30 minutes, tossing once halfway through, until tender & browned.
Pour cream over sprouts & continue baking about 10 minutes, until cream has thickened.
Stir together the breadcrumbs with the remaining tsp of melted butter, salt, pepper & grated cheese. Remove pan from oven. Set oven to broil & position top rack 6 inches below broiler. Sprinkle breadcrumb mixture over sprouts and broil 3 to 5 minutes, until golden brown. Serves 8 at 270 calories per serving.
Both sound great, but......... I’m single and one day I bought frozen brussel sprouts and cooked them in cream of mushroom soup (extra mushrooms). They blew me up with gas. I nearly had to go to the ER. Love em, but not doing that again. BTW, one of my daughter fried me chicken livers, hearts and gizzards for fathers day...... my request. I was torn between that or liver w/bacon, onions (I don’t actually eat the onions, but you got to cook with them).
Your cheese and lima bean casserole sounds tasty to me...but then again I’m fond of lima beans.
Like to add a can of butter beans (do they count as lima family?) to my Navy Bean soup with smoked pork butt cubes. Great fall lunch.
Brussel sprouts, ehhh, maybe with a quarter pound of butter. Never buy or cook them myself, but to be polite as a guest I manage to choke them down. Always thought they were bitter because they were runt cabbages. Short veggie syndrome.
Re: Aldi mandoline...worked great for my red onion & cabbage cole slaw with the fine slicer blade. Red Bell pepper was easier to slice fine with knife work. The grater blade have the circular holes with tiny burrs, two sizes. Didn’t work out so well for lemon zest. Didn’t try the julienne blades yet. All in all for $3 not a bad deal. Still though, my very old reliable mini washboard type grater is hard to beat for grating fast and taking up little room.
Most people eat it with fruit but try it with chives and black pepper.
I add a bit of buttermilk too.
Had a friend who used to have this for lunch on Fridays and she got me hooked on it.
Two of my favorites! Thanks!
I love lima beans! And I was born in Lima, Ohio...
What a great subject! I love Lima beans though. The other day I added 2 cups of cooked barley to one can of Lima beans, added salt and it was delicious!
I love brussels sprouts! Definitively going to try that second recipe.
I’m trying to remember the last time I had lima beans and if I liked them or not. It had to have been when I was a kid somewhere else, maybe? They weren’t a staple in our house.
I saw one recipe that looked like it might be the same as a classic green bean casserole with lima beans instead, but the ingredients didn’t look like they matched the picture.
This recipe looks like it might be worth trying:
Luscious Lima Bean Soup
Ingredients
1 pound dry lima beans
4 cups water
5 carrots, chopped
1 leek, bulb only, chopped
2 tablespoons minced shallots
2 stalks celery, chopped
4 cubes vegetable bouillon
8 cups water
2 tablespoons olive oil
Directions
Bring 4 cups of water to a boil. Add dry lima beans, and boil for 2 to 3 minutes. Remove from heat, and allow the beans to sit, covered, for 1 to 2 hours to soften. Drain and rinse until water runs clear, discarding bean water.
In a soup pot, saute vegetables in olive oil until onions and celery are translucent. Add lima beans, and saute for another 2 to 3 minutes.
In the meantime, bring 4 cups of water to a boil. Add the vegetable bouillon to the boiling water, and stir until dissolved. Add broth to the sauteed vegetables and beans. Add remaining water, and allow soup to simmer over a low flame for 1 to 1 1/2 hours. Serve steaming hot.
http://allrecipes.com/recipe/12907/luscious-lima-bean-soup/
The picture a the link has ham and bacon in it. That made it look appealing to me. I don’t see them listed in the ingredients though. Gotta love looking up recipes. I can tweak it with my way of making soups.
I used to HATE lima beans when I was a kid. When we were given them with supper, my sisters and I used to spit them into our napkins then be extra “helpful” with clearing the dishes from the table. Mom never caught on, we learned when we told her about it several years ago. We had a good laugh.
Funny thing is I actually like them now - baby lima beans especially - and I really like the fresh “butter” beans, which are like limas.
Finally you have made a recipe I don’t want to eat! I am not just a dumb omnivore!! ;)
Ask Liz what I am doing right now. She knows. Liz, I’m at the stage where I melt the white chocolate and warm up the whipped cream. Lucky us with 90 degrees outside, I placed the covered bowl of whipped cream out on the porch ping pong table for a few minutes. (Kids are at camp and I love to cook so much I’m making my own birthday cake from Liz’s recipe...)
I’ve really enjoyed reading this thread. I hated Brussels sprouts when I was a child, and my mother loved teasing me about it. We finally reached a kind of truce: she would cook a different vegetable for me if I would eat one sprout. I agreed, with some dramatic moaning and sighing, which only made her laugh harder. They did taste terrible, probably because she boiled them to death.
When I started learning how to cook a few years ago, I discovered new ways to prepare the sprouts. Now they’re my favorite vegetable. These days I love to toss them with a little olive oil, salt and pepper and then roast them in the oven. The leaves become so crisp and tasty, almost like potato chips. A real treat. I wish my mom had lived to see my Brussels sprout conversion. She’d probably tell me, “See? I knew you’d end up liking them!”
I absolutely love lima beans...have since I was a kid. I’ve been known to eat them straight out of the can (how embarrassing:) Didn’t see a recipe for Calico Beans posted; this is close to the recipe my Mom uses; all the guys love it:
http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/cowboy-calico-beans