Sea Beans

[sabg]

i have a substantial bag of sea beans and have eaten as many as possible raw. any ideas? i have heard youcan sautee them. i guess a bit of evoo??? what could i mix them with?? i have tried to feed them to my husbband and he just looks scared.

[LEdlund]

I love sea beans.

My favorite is to saute them with evoo then sprinkle them on a piece of grilled salmon.

[Wolfert]

A good marinade for fresh sea bean tips is to combine chopped onio, red pepper flakes, hazelnut or walnut oil, and mild vinegar or verjus. Marinate the beans for about an hour then mix with arugula and add salt to taste.

"Along the Aegean and Turkish Mediterranean coasts, sea baeans are boiled and served with a tarator sauce. Check any Eastern Mediterranean cookbook for a recipe.

[JAZ]

Elizabeth Schneider, in Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini, gives these suggestions:

A salad of sea beans (blanched), shrimp, apple and belgian endive, tossed in a dressing of lemon juice olive oil, fennel seed and chives

A frittata with potatoes, sean beans, onion and dill (saute the potatoes and onions until tender, then add the sea beans and cook for 2 or 3 minutes. Fold mixture into beaten eggs and sprinkle with dill).

Sea bean tempura

A slaw of Savoy cabbage and sea beans, with orange and lime segments, and tossed with a dressing of the citrus juices and hazelnut oil.

[SobaAddict70]

These were amazing, served with hamachi sashimi, EVOO and a little fleur de sel, at Craft.

Other than that, I'm not quite sure what to do with them.

Soba

[mudbug]

Scroll down to my post at this thread. There are recipes, uses, and more information on seabeans aka samphire there.

Let us know if you try any.

[fifi]

Now I am curious...

As a long time beach comber, these are what I have always called sea beans.

But we have a plant here at the edge of salt water marshes and at beach margins called glasswort locally and samphire more commonly in the UK. Is this what you are calling sea beans?

Whenever we find this stuff, we just have a munch out right there. I have never cooked it because I like the crisp and juicy texture raw.

[beans]

But we have a plant here at the edge of salt water marshes and at beach margins called glasswort locally and samphire more commonly in the UK. Is this what you are calling sea beans?

Whenever we find this stuff, we just have a munch out right there. I have never cooked it because I like the crisp and juicy texture raw.

Those sort of look like what we call beach asparagus in Alaska. I love them slightly blanched, tossed with a bit of butter.

What are sea beans?

[Mudpuppie]

Now I am curious...

As a long time beach comber, these are what I have always called sea beans.

Fifi, fellow Texan, we were on the same page. I have a few that I've collected along the gulf coast, and I couldn't imagine how they could possibly be used in a salad.

But then I remembered seeing some at Whole Foods recently. They look very much like the second picture you linked to. In fact -- here's a link -- it seems they're the same thing.

[ned]

My first experience of the sea bean was on the Washington state coast. A curious boy tasting a plant he found growing in the sand. Then last year my wife had the excellent judgement to take me to Picholine for my birthday. The second or third plate to arrive at table was cubed shellfish gelee with uni flan garnished with sea beans. Just awesome. I've since chopped them finely and served in shellfish or lobster consomme in the place of chives. Or you can just eat them out of the bag. I hope lots of people buy them so they stick around. Whole foods in chelsea sometimes has them, the 14st street garden of eden has them more often.

[Adam Balic]

Now I know what you are all taking about, "Sea Beans" = "samphire". Very nice, steamed and served with melted butter and a couple of kilos of langoustines to garnish.

[sabg]

Now I am curious...

As a long time beach comber, these are what I have always called sea beans.

But we have a plant here at the edge of salt water marshes and at beach margins called glasswort locally and samphire more commonly in the UK. Is this what you are calling sea beans?

Whenever we find this stuff, we just have a munch out right there. I have never cooked it because I like the crisp and juicy texture raw.

ITS THE SECOND, THE GLASSWORT. I LOVE THEM RAW ALSO BUT HAVE SOOOO MANY, I WAS LOOKING TO CHANGE IT UP A BIT.

[sabg]

Now I am curious...

As a long time beach comber, these are what I have always called sea beans.

Fifi, fellow Texan, we were on the same page. I have a few that I've collected along the gulf coast, and I couldn't imagine how they could possibly be used in a salad.

But then I remembered seeing some at Whole Foods recently. They look very much like the second picture you linked to. In fact -- here's a link -- it seems they're the same thing.

thats where i found them, whole foods on 23rd. love them. going to try sauteeing them this evening.

[mudbug]

Now I am curious...

As a long time beach comber, these are what I have always called sea beans.

But we have a plant here at the edge of salt water marshes and at beach margins called glasswort locally and samphire more commonly in the UK. Is this what you are calling sea beans?

fifi,

Did you refer to the link I posted just above yours? In it, I address the first link you provide. And yes, the second link you refer to falls under the category of the common name "seabeans", as does the first.

"Seabeans" is simply a common name for both of what you describe and more (edible and not). In order to be accurate, it's best to stick to the Latin/Scientific/Botanical names.

sabg,

The term "seabeans" actually is accurate for both (edible and non-edible). Just depends on where you live and what they called 'em. "Seabeans" is just a common name. Just as "cabbage" can mean radiccio to one person, brussels sprouts to another, and bok choy to another.

All are discussed here.

[mudbug]

i have a substantial bag of sea beans and have eaten as many as possible raw. any ideas? i have heard youcan sautee them. i guess a bit of evoo??? what could i mix them with?? i have tried to feed them to my husbband and he just looks scared.

sabg,

Recipes for the following can be found at Melissas.com.

Avocado Sea Bean

Mushroom and Sea Bean Salad

Crisp Sea Bean Salad

Let us know if you try any of the recipes posted in this thread or come up with other variations. I'm sure we'd all love to know what you did and how you liked them.

[ludja]

cigalechante recently posted an interesting thread re: procuring pickled salicorne on the France forum. Until I looked it up I didn't realize it was the same thing as "glasswort" and, I think, "sea bean". Thought I would start this thread in the Cooking forum and including all the different names in the thread title in the hopes that there might be more response.

As mentioned previously, it can be used fresh or in pickled form. Seems to grow over a large part of the U.S. seaboard as well.

Any experiences to share?

Edited September 26, 2004 by ludja (log)

[jackal10]

Usually known here as Samphire.

Its delicious.

Starts here at midsummer for about a month. It grows wild on sandy sea shores and salt marshes.

Shakespeare describes samphire picking as a "ghastly trade"

Treat like asparagus. Serve with melted butter.

I think it works better as a seasonal treat and a dish on its own, rather than as bed or garnish for fish dishes.

If its not very young, it will have a glassy core in each stem. Pick it up in your fingers and suck the iodiney seaweed flavoured flesh off the core.

[fifi]

It grows here on the gulf coast in the sandy areas in the salt marshes and sometimes in the dune areas at the beach. We usually just munch it on site. I have never harvested it to serve as a separate dish. I can't imagine cooking it or pickling it. I would hate to mess up that lovely texture. The variety that we have here inevitably has that core. The technique for eating it involves stripping off the succulent parts with your teeth and discarding the core. Now that I think of it, if stripping it were easy enough, I can see adding it to a salad or actually building a salad around it.

[Carrot Top]

Mmm hmm. Samphire. Grows along the shore in New England and Maine...it is one of those things I think of as being the wild summer foods of childhood...a nibble of samphire, a handful of blackberries, some small sweet wild strawberries, a bitter mouthful of sorrel...sour popping little Concord grapes from the vine, enough green apples to make you sick....

It is so precious to me in this category of thought that I like to keep it there and not move it into the 'general foods to cook' category!

[Carrot Top]

Okay...you are all going to think I'm crazy (so what else is new ) but a memory just came to mind of hearing or reading of samphire being used instead of angelica, in a candied form to decorate desserts, sometime in past history (and obviously in a geographic place where angelica did not grow but samphire did).

Anyone else ever hear of this?

[carswell]

Young shoots, usually available in the spring and early summer, can be chopped raw and added to salads. Older plants often benefit from blanching to remove bitterness and salt. Steamed or sautéed, it makes a fine vegetable accompaniment, especially to fish. I also like it with spuds, either chopped and stirred into mashed potatoes or puréed in soup. The French combine chopped pickled salicorne with crème fraîche to make a sauce for smoked herring and other marinated fish. And this thread has got me thinking that it might be a tasty addition to a seafood risotto.

[Carrot Top]

Waverly Root on samphire: 'an English plant known also as sea fennel, descr. long ago as "of a spicie taste with a certaine salntness,": not to mention the samphire which is the seaside purslane, the prickly samphire which is the sea parsnip, the Jamaica samphire which is saltwort, or the marsh samphire which is saltwort too, but a different kind, known also as chicken claws or glasswort, since it was once used to make glass, a safer use perhaps than eating it, for John Gerard wrote that "a great quantitie taken is mischievous and deadly," but it did have the advantage that "the smel and smoke...of this herbe being burnt drives away serpents."

Euell Gibbons gives the name of his chapter on Purslane as "India's Gift to the World" and has written four pages on the subject...included in his description is the note that "Purslane is neither pungent nor bitter; it has a mild acid taste and a fatty or mucilaginous quality which most people like, but a few find it objectionable.....It is this mucilaginous characteristic, which makes purslane a valuable addition to soups and stews, serving, like okra...to give these dishes a desirable consistency."

[ludja]

Here are a few photos:

european samphire photo

second photo from Cape Cod

[fifi]

Salicornia virginica looks closest to what we have here on the Texas gulf coast.

[emsny]

VERY briefly steamed, then cooled, it makes a great ingredient in a crab salad. This is based on a frogs' leg salad with samphire and garlicky mayonnaise I remember having years ago at Jacques Maniere's long-gone Paris restaurant Dodin-Bouffant.