Beans with Mushrooms

Name: Beans with Mushrooms: Stewed White Beans with Wild Mushrooms
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 45 min
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Dried white beans 1 cup (170 g); Wild mushrooms (boiled) 200 g; Onion 2-3; Vegetable oil 2 tbsp; Dill, parsley 3-4 sprigs; Salt, ground black pepper, soy sauce, flour to taste

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45 mins

Strictly speaking, beans stewed in a thick sauce with mushrooms and onion count as a main course. Many people like to make it as a thick soup instead, which goes beautifully with fresh bread and herbs. It’s a matter of taste.

Georgian dishes under the general name lobio usually mean the dish is made from beans. These can be dried beans, shelling beans or green bean pods. Such dishes are generously seasoned with herbs, often with pomegranate juice or even pomegranate seeds, and always served with bread baked in a wood-fired oven. A thick bean dish is scooped straight from the plate with a piece of bread. To my mind that’s the tastiest way, though maybe not quite the proper one. Tasty bean soup without potatoes — can be just as thick, if you like.

Beans are cooked in hundreds of ways around the world, and in regions where beans are most popular, small nuances of a recipe can matter a great deal. In Bulgaria, for example, there are many dishes of stewed beans made with different spices, and they turn out to be essentially different dishes. The taste of the finished dish also varies a lot depending on what you add to the stewed beans: meat, game, mushrooms, vegetables. Stewed beans with mushrooms can be made without any extra ingredients, just like beans with meat, but the dish always has plenty of aromatic spices and a thick sauce.

Beans with mushrooms is an easy dish and fits a good, hearty dinner perfectly. Just soak the beans ahead of time so they cook well. If you take care of the beans in advance, the total cooking time is under an hour, just like stewed potatoes with meat.

At home we usually don’t preserve mushrooms. We clean fresh wild mushrooms and boil them without spices or salt. At most, if the mushrooms darken a lot while boiling, we add a little table vinegar to the water. Then the mushrooms go into plastic bags and are deep-frozen. When we need them, we thaw the mushrooms and make pasta with mushrooms or, a great favorite of ours, mushroom julienne, mushrooms baked with cheese, and of course potatoes with mushrooms. Another favorite is stewed beans with mushrooms. It’s a tasty, filling dish with eastern “notes”.

6 ingredientsTo the recipe

More with beans

Pumpkin Chili with Red Kidney Beans and Tomatoes

1 h

Beans with Vegetables

1 h 15 min

Stewed Beans with Onion and Tomatoes

7 h

Stewed Green Beans

1 h 20 min

Borscht with Mushrooms

1 h

Ingredients

2 servings

Dried white beans 1 cup
(170 g)
Wild mushrooms (boiled) 200 g
Onion 2-3
Vegetable oil 2 tbsp
Dill, parsley 3-4 sprigs
Salt, ground black pepper, soy sauce, flour to taste

Step-by-step recipe

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For beans with mushrooms, wild mushrooms work best, ideally freshly picked. Out of season, boiled and frozen porcini, bay boletes, birch boletes and the like will do very well. If you have no wild mushrooms, use button mushrooms or oyster mushrooms, boiling them first for 10-15 mins.
Soak the white beans ahead of time, for at least 6 hours. Why white: the skin of colored or red beans darkens when cooked and stains the whole dish. The evening before, cover the dried beans with water and put them in the fridge.
After soaking, boil the beans until done, drain the water and use the beans for the dish. Cut the wild mushrooms into large pieces. Peel the onion and cut it into thick strips.
Heat the vegetable oil in a sauté pan and fry the coarsely cut onion in it until nicely golden. Fry over high heat without a lid, stirring the onion often so it browns evenly.
Add the cut mushrooms to the fried onion and fry the onion with the mushrooms for 5-6 mins, stirring constantly. Don’t add salt or spices yet. Fried mushrooms with onion are already a wonderful dish on their own. This is roughly how we cook, in season, fried chanterelles.
Add the boiled white beans to the fried mushrooms and onion. Add pepper and just a little salt. Most of the salt will come with the sauce. Add half a cup of hot water (100 ml) to the beans with mushrooms and onion and stew everything under a lid over low heat for 12-15 mins.
While the dish stews, make the sauce. There are two options, your choice. First: fry a tablespoon of wheat flour (10 g) in a dry pan until lightly browned and “brew” it with boiling water to the thickness you want. Add pepper and salt to taste and let the sauce simmer over low heat for 4-5 mins. Second: in a cup, mix 1 tbsp flour (10 g) with 1-2 tbsp dark soy sauce and thin with a little boiled water. Soy sauce is quite salty, so you most likely won’t need to add any more salt.
Pour the sauce over the beans, stir, and stew over low heat for up to 10 mins. If needed, add a little more salt and pepper.
Serve the finished beans with mushrooms on plates. Sprinkle with very finely chopped herbs.
Serve the beans with mushrooms right away, while the dish is still hot. By the way, if you like, you can sprinkle the beans with mushrooms with a pinch of coarsely ground hot pepper.