Bean Butter

Recipe submitted by April R.

Beans instead of Butter

To make your “bean butter”, use either Small White beans or Great Northern white beans. Rinse 1 cup of beans and add water to cover 1” above beans. In a small pressure cooker, cooking the beans to the tender point takes about 35 minutes. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, you can simmer them for a few hours in a regular covered saucepan. When the beans are soft, mash them with a fork in enough of their cooking liquid to resemble the consistency of shortening.

You can also use canned white beans, just mashing them with the canning liquid. It is handy, although costlier. Use white beans because they are so bland in flavor and color. You could use other beans just as successfully, but they add their own color and flavor slightly. If you cook your own beans, it would make sense to make a big batch for soup, or baked beans, and just take the amount you need to use as “butter” before you season them. You can also cook a larger batch; mash, divide into ½ cup portions and freeze for future baking.

An easier way to make mashed beans, is to grind the white beans in your wheat grinder to make flour. Add 1 cup of this flour to 2 cups boiling water, whisking in to blend. Simmer 5 minutes covered. This will make a very smooth bean mixture that is not as thick. Use it just as you would mashed beans.

This bean flour is handy to have around as it has a shelf life of 6 months without refrigeration! Keep a jar of it in your cupboard and you can quickly make your butter substitute whenever you need. It can also be used as a thickener or a nutritious addition to wheat flour when you are making bread (Fill measuring cup 1/8 full with bean flour, fill the rest of the way with wheat flour to substitute for 1 cup wheat flour.)

When baking, replace the beans for butter or margarine, cup for cup. You can entirely replace the fat with beans and still get an excellent product in brownies and cakes. You won’t notice any difference with cakes or sweet breads, but cookies have a different texture that is more cake-like. Fat makes things chewy. If you are timid, start with replacing ¾ of the butter called for with mashed beans, and use butter for the other 1/4.