How to cook Broad Beans

Broad beans can be eaten as both green shelled and dry shelled beans.

Dried broad beans are large, very hard beans that need to soak overnight before cooking.

They have a sweet, nutty taste and a creamy texture.

Broad beans are popular in Mediterranean cuisine and are often added to pasta, risotto, and soups.

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 over-wintered in a protected location, but even the maincrop 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.