First ever Thicket Bean (Phaseolus polystachios) harvest

Sorry this isn’t actually foraging per se, but the only kind of people who’d grow these are probably foragers anyway. I’ve been growing them for a couple years, but this is the first year I had enough to bother trying to eat them! From two plants we got about 1/2 a cup.

So my question is, does anyone have any tips for actually eating these things?? We tried soaking them for 24 hours and boiling them for 2 hours, and they were still inedibly bitter! I’m thinking maybe brining them, an alkaline soak, splitting them all in half, and/or swapping out the cooking water a few times. At least one of those ought to work hopefully. It’ll have to wait till next year though, we wasted these ones lol.

athos77,

Maybe try reading through this thread. Not all the comments address your specific question, but it's interesting regardless.

evasive_chimpanzee,

It might be one of those “soak with 3 changes of water, and boil with 3 changes” situations to leach out whatever is making them bitter. “Bitter” in plants is often caused by alkaloids, and usually you don’t usually want to eat them (unless they are one of the fun alkaloids). I’m sure you’ve googled around for it, but from this link, it sounds like other people are saying the same thing. permies.com/…/Phaseolus-polystachios-thicket-bean…

MxRemy,

Thanks! That’s what I was thinking too, if it works next year I’ll post a follow-up for everybody. Worst case scenario maybe the Lupini Bean treatment would do the trick, right?

evasive_chimpanzee,

Yeah, I think treating them like lupini is probably a good bet. Native people knew how to soak acorns to make them edible, I could see them using a similar process for beans.

bastian_5,

The foraging community has finally discovered the agricultural revolution.

The solution is to take the best tasting plants and only breed those ones together. After a few generations you end up with something edible.

MxRemy,

Or, alternatively, these things are perfectly edible and we’ve just lost the knowledge of how to prepare them properly, because the colonizers completely discounted indigenous foodways. But honestly it might be just as difficult to re-figure out how to prepare them as it would be to selectively breed more user-friendly ones 😅

pseudo,
@pseudo@jlai.lu avatar

No idea, sorry. Good luck for next year.

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