Butter beans partner so well with garlic, lemon and extra virgin olive oil that this recipe might convert even the most committed carnivore. Since eating a variety of foods is good for our gut health, and beans are inexpensive and nutritious, adding them to our weekly diet makes so much sense. Especially with a recipe as simple as butter beans with garlic.

There’s something very generous about creamy butter beans. If you’ve tried our butterbean and pomegranate tapenade recipe you’ll know how a tin, or better still a jar, of butter beans absorbs flavours when warm. For this recipe, we soaked dried beans overnight and found that they needed to cook for well over an hour to become totally soft. While dried butter beans cost substantially less than a jar, given energy prices, buying a good quality jar of beans or using a pressure cooker would make more sense. Interestingly, pressure cookers have never gone out of fashion in Lebanon but luckily seem to be making a come back in the UK.

The beans need to be warm when the garlic and extra virgin olive oil are added. So if you’re using a jar, decant, rinse and add a little water to the saucepan as you heat the beans. Keep back some of the bean water which when continuously stirred in with the extra virgin olive oil, lemon and garlic will emulsify and make a glossy coating over the beans. Chopped parsley adds some crunch to another wise creamy dish. 

enough for 4