- Baby Lima Beans with Red Wine Sauce - Photo by Author, Renee Shelton
If you are looking to increase your legume intake, here is a great recipe to try using Lima beans. Lima beans are a flavorful and nutritious legume, and can be found either fresh from the garden, frozen, dried, and even canned. When purchasing canned Lima beans, make sure you are buying plain beans as they are often prepared and sold in a ham sauce.
While Lima beans can be found in many forms, using them when fresh-frozen provides an easy way to prepare them, and they store easy in the freezer. Frozen Lima beans can be sauteed, boiled or simmered until cooked. Lima beans go well with other vegetables, and like all legumes, can combine with grains, nuts, seeds, and even dairy products, to make a complete protein.
This recipe uses bacon to give a slight smoky flavor to the Lima beans. Use your favorite style of bacon, or use turkey bacon if cholesterol is an issue. This dish can be easily transformed into a meatless dish by simply omitting the bacon entirely. When doing that, replace the green onions with yellow onions, and add 3/4 cup of them in the pan with the carrots and celery, and about 1 tablespoon of olive oil when browning in the saucepan, and use vegetable stock in place of the beef stock.
This recipe makes about 6 servings as a side dish.
Baby Lima Beans in a Red Wine Sauce
Ingredients:
- 3 slices thick-cut style bacon, chopped (about 2/3 cup)
- 1/2 cup diced carrot
- 1/2 cup diced celery
- 1/2 cup red wine
- 1/2 cup beef stock
- 1 1-lb. package of frozen baby Lima beans
- 5 green onions sliced, white parts only
- 3 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley
- 1/4 tsp paprika
- 1/4 tsp dry mustard
- Black pepper to taste
Procedure:
- Cook the chopped bacon in a large, heavy saucepan over medium heat until lightly browned and crisp. Use a slotted spoon to remove the bacon from the pan. Pour out all but 1 teaspoon of the bacon fat from the pan.
- Add the diced carrot and celery to pan. Cook for about 3 to 5 minutes until the vegetables are tender-crisp and light brown in color.
- Pour in the beef stock and red wine. Add in the Lima beans, green onion and parsley. Sprinkle in the paprika and dry mustard, and add black pepper if using. Increase the temperature to medium high to bring the beans up to a boil, then reduce heat to bring the beans down to a soft simmer. Cover the pan and cook for about 20 minutes, or until the beans are done to the desired tenderness.
- Serve warm as a side dish.
Renee Shelton - Renee Shelton is a classically trained culinarian frequently writing about baking, healthy cooking, fishing & sewing.
