Cannellini beans are large white beans used in Italian cuisine, with a mild flavor and kidney-like shape. Choose beans with consistent color, smooth skin, and no dark spots. They can be bought canned, dried, or fresh and used in soups, stews, salads, and braised dishes. Canned beans are convenient but less flavorful, while dried beans are inexpensive and stay on the shelf for months. Fresh beans cook quickly and are good for salads. Cannellini beans pair well with vegetables, pasta, and fresh herbs.
Cannellini beans are large white beans with a kidney-like shape and a mild flavor. The best specimens have smooth, robust skin and a uniform color. Choosing the best beans depends on your purpose for their use and the preparation time for the planned dish. Also known as white beans and fazolia beans, cannellini beans are common in Italian cuisine. You can buy these beans canned, dried or fresh and cook them as part of soups or stews, salads and braised dishes.
This bean is about 0.5 cm (1 cm) long and 0.5 cm (0.25 in) wide, with a distinct white to cream skin and an oblong shape similar to that of the kidney bean. Cannellini beans hold their shape well when cooked and closely resemble the large northern and navy beans, which replace cannellini beans in some recipes. This mild-tasting, nutty bean makes a good choice in recipes that simply call for white beans.
Look for cannellini beans that have consistent color, no dark or chalky spots, and smooth, shiny skin without wrinkles. The beans should look plump, not shrunken, and shouldn’t contain many lumps of dirt or rocks. When buying fresh cannellini beans, choose long, thin, yellow to light green pods that are slightly dry or wrinkled to make shelling easier. Very fresh cannellini beans can be difficult to remove from their pods if they are not allowed to dry slightly first.
The beans you choose also depend on what you plan to use them and how much cooking time you have available. Canned beans are the most convenient, but also the most expensive, and produce a slightly less flavorful product with a mushy texture that works well in soups, but isn’t ideal for salads. Dried beans take much longer to cook, but are relatively inexpensive and stay on your pantry shelf for months at a time. Fresh cannellini beans can be hard to find, but they cook more quickly than their dried cousins.
Traditional Italian cooks use cannellini beans in cold salads with olive oil and other dressings, or as part of slow-cooked ragout dishes with or without meat. Cannellini beans also perform well in soup and stew, though they should never be overcooked, as they will disintegrate in the starchy mush. The liquid left over from cooking the dried cannellini beans can be added to the broth to thicken it without the need for flour or cornstarch. The mild flavor of these beans pairs well with vegetables, pasta, and fresh herbs, like basil.
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