My lima and black eye pea plants aren’t exactly producing buckets of beans yet, but I realized something while looking at all those young pods in the garden: I don’t have to wait for a huge harvest to eat them.
So I picked what I had.
The beans inside were still young and small, which turned out to be perfect for lunch. Young butter beans are tender, creamy and cook much faster than mature beans.
Even better, I had leftover smoked pork chop bones with quite a bit of meat still attached and some homemade ham bone broth in the refrigerator.
That’s pretty much everything you need for an incredible little pot of beans.
Fresh Garden Beans with Smoked Pork
Ingredients
- 1–2 cups freshly shelled young lima or butter beans
- 1–2 leftover smoked pork chop bones with meat attached
- 2–3 cups ham bone broth or chicken broth
- 1/2 small onion, chopped
- Black pepper, to taste
- Salt, only if needed
Instructions
Place the smoked pork chop bones in a saucepan or small Dutch oven.
Add the chopped onion and enough ham bone broth to mostly cover the pork.
Bring to a gentle simmer, cover and cook for about 20–30 minutes. This gives the smoky pork bones time to flavor the broth and loosens any meat still clinging to them.
While the pork simmers, shell the fresh butter beans.
Add the beans to the pot and continue simmering gently for about 15–30 minutes, or until they’re tender and creamy.
Young beans can cook surprisingly quickly, so start checking them after about 15 minutes.
Remove the pork bones from the pot. Once they’re cool enough to handle, pull off any remaining meat and return the meat to the beans.
Taste the broth before adding any salt. Between homemade ham broth and smoked pork, you may find that it doesn’t need any additional salt at all.
Add plenty of freshly ground black pepper and serve hot.
Don’t Wait for a Huge Bean Harvest
If you’re growing lima or butter beans at home, you don’t have to wait until you have enough to fill a stockpot.
That’s exactly how this lunch came about.
My plants are producing, just not a ton at once yet. Instead of leaving every pod on the vine waiting for one giant harvest, I picked enough young beans for a small pot.
And honestly, the baby beans may be even better.
They’re tender, fresh and don’t require the long cooking time you’d expect from dried beans.
Use Those Leftover Pork Bones!
This is also exactly why I don’t like throwing away meaty bones from smoked pork chops.
There may not be enough meat left for another meal by itself, but simmer those bones in broth and suddenly they’re doing a whole new job.
The smoke from the pork seasons the broth, the remaining meat becomes tender enough to pull right off the bone, and that flavor gets absorbed by the fresh beans.
If you don’t have smoked pork chops, you could make the same recipe with a ham bone, ham hock or leftover smoked ham.
Make It Brothy
When I only have a small harvest of beans, I don’t try to turn them into a huge traditional pot of butter beans.
I make them brothy.
The ham broth becomes part of the meal rather than simply being cooking liquid. Ladle the beans, pieces of smoky pork and plenty of that broth into a bowl.
Add a piece of cornbread on the side—or right into the bowl to soak up that broth—and you’ve got a pretty fantastic lunch made almost entirely from things that might otherwise have been overlooked.
Sometimes you don’t need a huge garden harvest.
You just need enough for lunch.
