Christmas Lima Beans Bourguignon

As I continue to play with the box of dried beans that I got from Rancho Gordo at the beginning of the year, next up on my list was the bag of gorgeous Christmas Lima Beans, huge limas with chestnut-colored mottling.

Christmas Limas After Overnight Soak

These huge beans are reportedly quite meaty, so I decided to treat them like meat. And I was disappointed with the results, truth be told. But not all our dishes can be wins, can they? Not if we're experimenting.

Rummaging through the pantry, I saw my canister of dried porcini and that cued me to braise these limas with bacon, onions, porcini, and red wine, in the manner of boeuf bourguignon. 

Dried Porcini

Mirepoix: Leek, Onion, and Carrot

I cut several strips of bacon into crosswise strips called lardons and then rendered those lardons. The lardons went into the slow cooker with the beans while I poured off most of the bacon grease and sweated the leeks, onions, and carrot in the remaining grease. As the onions became translucent, I sprinkled a couple tablespoons of flour over the vegetables and cooked the mixture for another couple of minutes. Finally, I added a half a bottle of Pinot Noir to the pan and let the sauce thicken for a couple of minutes before pouring it over the beans in the slow cooker.

Christmas Limas with Porcini Liquid, Porcini, Bay, and Thyme

Added Bacon Lardons, Mirepoix Sweated in Bacon Grease, and Pinot Noir

7-1/2 Hours Later: a Big Bowl of Beans

I mentioned above that I wasn't happy with this dish. It was tasty and perfectly edible, but I won't be doing it again for two reasons. First, the melding of the beans with the bourguignon technique yielded something less than the original dish made with beef. The delicious red wine gravy added nothing to the beans. And second, after soaking overnight and then braising for 7-1/2 hours, a full third of the beans were still crunchy and not cooked through. To me, this seems like a quality issue with the beans and not an issue with my cooking of them.

These beans are so beautiful. I'm a bit sad that I'm not jumping for joy after having cooked them (and truth be told, probably will never again do so).