Azuki beans

[spaghetttti]

Any favorite ways to prepare, cook, and serve them?

Sweet or savory?

Edited October 22, 2005 by spaghetttti (log)

[Mooshmouse]

Yetty, one of my favourite simple desserts is served at Hapa Izakaya, a local Japanese restaurant. It's vanilla-bean ice cream, topped with sweet adzuki beans and chunks of senbei (rice cracker). Sounded weird the first time I read the menu description, but the textural combination coupled with the sweet/sour dichotomy is deliciously good.

[Pan]

Joie, what's the sour element in that dessert?

[Mooshmouse]

  Pan said:

Joie, what's the sour element in that dessert?

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Damn, my late-night posts... I meant salty!

[mizducky]

Hello--reviving this topic. I'm especially interested in hearing about savory recipes using these babies. I've got a bag of them in the kitchen begging to be used. Thanks in advance.

[miladyinsanity]

There's adzuki bean porridge, but that's sweet and you want savory.

[mrbigjas]

i've found that you can use azuki beans in most bean recipes, with an adjustment for their shorter cooking time. sure, they're a little sweeter than some, but it's really a relative thing--they still taste like beans after all. you might not want to do something like a mexican-style refried beans with them, but in most bean soup recipes they do fine.

[Khadija]

  mizducky said:

Hello--reviving this topic. I'm especially interested in hearing about savory recipes using these babies. I've got a bag of them in the kitchen begging to be used. Thanks in advance.

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Add me to the list. I have to admit that I've never tried adzuki beans, but I noticed people talking about them on egullet, and bought a bag when I saw them at the supermarket. But now they keep falling off my ingredient radar, and it would be great to change that!

[mizducky]

  mrbigjas said:

i've found that you can use azuki beans in most bean recipes, with an adjustment for their shorter cooking time.  sure, they're a little sweeter than some, but it's really a relative thing--they still taste like beans after all.  you might not want to do something like a mexican-style refried beans with them, but in most bean soup recipes they do fine.

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Yeah, I figured I could always just sub them for any other beans. But ... well, I guess I should clarify that I'm looking for savory recipes that work especially well with adzuki beans' unique properties and flavor profile--not necessarily traditional Asian recipes, but those would be really cool too.