All About Beans

Beans come in all shapes and sizes: big, small, round, flat, long, thin, short, fat - you name it, there's a bean just like it.

Some beans you can just cook and eat. Others must be soaked to make them edible. Beans come in many different colours; there's the rich green of the French bean (or Haricot Vert) and the sombre purple of the appropriately sha ped Kidney Bean.

Beans are delicious vegetables and are used in many dishes. They taste great when fried or boiled, and have a sweet flavour and a soft, yet firm texture. Green beans, with their distinctive and idiosyncratic aroma, are a firm fa vourite with those who like a suitable accompaniment to red meats.

Beans have other uses too. You can use the juice from a crushed bean to soothe irritable relatives, and the roast coffee bean has long been used as a herbal infusion to promote a drenaline release.

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