Vicia Faba - Culinary Uses

Culinary Uses

Broad beans are eaten while still young and tender, enabling harvesting to begin as early as the middle of spring for plants started under glass or overwintered in a protected location, but even the main crop sown in early spring will be ready from mid to late summer. Horse beans, left to mature fully, are usually harvested in the late autumn. The young leaves of the plant can also be eaten either raw or cooked like spinach.

Broad beans were one of the main foods in old Mediterranean Civilization above all for Old Romans and old Greek.

Preparing favas involves first removing the beans from their pods, then parboiling the beans to loosen their exterior coating, and removing that before cooking.

The beans can be fried, causing the skin to split open, and then salted and/or spiced to produce a savory, crunchy snack. These are popular in China, Colombia, Peru (habas saladas), Guatemala (habas), Mexico (habas con chile), Gilan (North of Iran) and Thailand (where their name means "open-mouth nut").

Broad bean purée with wild chicory is a typical Puglian dish in Italy.

In the Sichuan cuisine of China, broad beans are combined with soybeans and chili peppers to produce a spicy fermented bean paste called doubanjiang. Perhaps due to the bean's popularity in Sichuan cuisine, in addition to the regular Chinese term for "broad bean," they are also known as "Sichuan beans" (川豆) in Chinese.

In some Arab countries, the fava bean is used for a breakfast dish called ful medames.

Fava beans are common in Latin American cuisines, as well. In central Mexico, mashed fava beans are a common filling for many corn flour-based antojito snacks such as tlacoyos. In Colombia, they are most often used whole in vegetable soups. Dried and salted fava beans are a popular snack in many Latin countries.

In Portugal, a fava bean (usually referred to as fava in Portuguese) is included in the bolo-rei (king cake), a Christmas cake. Traditionally, the person who gets the fava has to buy the cake the following year.

In the Netherlands, they are traditionally eaten with fresh savory and some melted butter. When rubbed, the velvet insides of the pods are a folk remedy against warts.

Broad beans are widely cultivated in the Kech and Panjgur districts of Balochistan Province in Pakistan, and in the eastern province of Iran. In the Balochi language, they are called bakalaink, and baghalee in Persian.

Judd mat Gaardebounen, or smoked collar of pork with broad beans, is the national dish of Luxembourg.