Ingredient: Black beans

Category: Vegetables

Season: All:

The small, shiny black turtle bean is especially popular in Latin American cuisine .

It is often called simply the black bean (frijol negro in Spanish , feijão preto in Portuguese ), although this can cause confusion with other black beans .

The black turtle bean has a dense, meaty texture and flavour reminiscent of mushrooms , which makes it popular in vegetarian dishes such as the Mexican-American black bean burrito .

It is a very popular bean in various regions of Brazil, and is used in the national dish, feijoada .

It is also a principal ingredient of Platillo Moros y Cristianos as in Cuba, served elsewhere in almost all Latin America.

Black turtle beans have recently been reported to be an extremely good source of nutritional antioxidants

Black turtle bean varieties include:

Domino

Black Magic

Blackhawk

Nighthawk

The black bean, which is tender, chunky and sweet, sometimes sold in Britain as a black kidney bean.

This, botanically, is just another variation on the theme Phaseolus vulgaris, the indispensable haricot bean.

You may find black soya beans in health food stores, either dried or in special salted, fermented preparations: these are completely different in taste and use.