Know your Pink bean

• The pink bean is famously known as the chili bean, but in addition is also known by the Spanish name Habichuelas Rosadas.

Know your Pink bean - Varieties

• Some varieties of the pink bean include the O’odham pink bean, and the Sedona pink bean.

O’odham pink bean

• The O’odham (O’dham) Pink Bean is a bush bean native to the desert borderlands of Sonora and Arizona.

  • This bean has been an important resource for the O’odham people since the early eighteenth century.

  • Reports from the early 1900s indicate that, as a staple crop of the Tohono O’odham, nearly two million pounds were produced annually.

  • Unfortunately, this highly cherished crop that was once widely cultivated across the south-west has few remaining producers.

  • The bean is a medium-sized, uniformly colored, pink bean that is moderately drought resistant and heat tolerant.

  • When the late summer rains come across the Southern Arizona desert, this tasty, creamy-textured bean ripens and is ready for harvest.

  • A traditional harvest includes uprooting the entire plant, leaving it out to dry and then threshing the plant with sticks to remove the pods before they are winnowed in the wind.

  • Once harvested, the protein-rich beans are boiled or baked with meat or other animal fats.

Sedona pink bean

• The Sedona pink bean was developed by the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station in the United States, and was released in 2005.

• The bean is an upright, disease-resistant cultivar of the pink bean.

• It averages 50 cm in height and exhibits an upright growth habit, with gives it moderate resistance to lodging.

• Sedona has white flowers and blooms 41 to 44 days after planting.

• Sedona is a midseason bean, maturing 93 days after planting and has a range in maturity from 90 to 95 days, depending on season and location.

Know your Pink bean - Cuisine