Meze Cold Vegan

Broad bean purée

Name: Broad bean purée
Prep time: 210 min
Cook time: 50 min
Total time: 260 min
Yield: 6
Cuisine: Aegean
Ingredients: 400 g Dried broad beans, hulled; 1 pcs Onion; 1 dsp Sugar; 80 ml Olive oil; 2 pcs Lemons; 30 g Dill; 1 litre Water; 8 g Salt

Broad beans are not boiled in their skins: the skin cooks but never chews, and the purée comes out gritty.

Pulses · Aegean · Vegan · For guests · Weekend batch

260 minTime

356Kcal / serving

2137Total kcal

Preparation: 30 min
Cooking: 50 min
Resting: 180 min
Difficulty: Practised hand
Cost: Very cheap
Season: Spring, Summer

Where this dish comes from

Fava is the meze of the Aegean and of Istanbul’s taverns, and its only difficulty is the skin. A dried broad bean’s skin is a thick layer of cellulose; it cooks without softening and leaves a gritty feeling even after blending. After an overnight soak the skins slip off by hand. Its setting into a sliceable block as it cools is not starch but the bean’s protein: the gel firms in the cold.

Method

Before the heat goes on

Soak the dried beans overnight and slip the skins off by hand.
A bean that will not give up its skin has not soaked enough: give it two hours more.

You will need: A pan · A stick blender · A flat dish or tray

Put the skinned beans, the onion and the sugar in the pan with the water and cook forty-five to fifty minutes, until they collapse completely.

Look for No resistance at all under a spoon, and the water nearly all absorbed.

Why A fava is a purée and the beans have to disintegrate entirely; half-cooked, they stay grainy even after blending. The sugar balances the bean’s faint bitterness.

If it went wrong

If the water goes early, add 100 ml hot. If the beans have not collapsed, fifteen minutes more: underdone beans leave a fava irrecoverably grainy.
Add the salt, blend two minutes until smooth and pour the olive oil in as it runs.

Look for It should gloss, lighten and fall from the spoon in a thick ribbon.

Why The oil goes in with the machine running: poured slowly it emulsifies and makes the purée velvety, and added all at once it stays separate on the surface.

Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back
Pour the hot purée into a flat dish, smooth the surface and chill it for AT LEAST three hours.

Look for After three hours a knife cut should leave a clean edge.

Why A fava sets in the cold, and that is the bean’s protein rather than its starch: the protein gel firms and the purée becomes sliceable. Hot fava is a soup.

Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back

Salt · 0.49% Low. Everything reads flat and nothing steps forward.
Slice it, squeeze the lemon over and finish with the dill and the rest of the oil.

Look for The slices should hold their shape.

Why Lemon last: acid softens the protein gel, and added earlier the fava never sets.

Salt · 0.46% Low. Everything reads flat and nothing steps forward.

What the model could follow

This recipe was run through the engine step by step — what goes in when, and at what temperature and for how long. The reactions above come from that run.

Not simulated: Fava beans (dry). The engine currently measures the chemistry of sixteen ingredients; the others count as weight in the pot but their composition does not enter the arithmetic. That is not "nothing happens", it is "nobody looked". In this recipe about 77% of the weight can be characterised that way, which makes every share above a lower bound.

peak 98 °C · 713 minutes · engine 1.0.0 · confidence low

Servings

6

Ingredients

400 g Dried broad beans, hulled
1 pcs Onion
1 dsp Sugar
80 ml Olive oil
2 pcs Lemons
30 g Dill
1 litre Water
8 g Salt

What did you think

Who is eating

Everyone A baby under one Pregnant A child An athlete

We hold no safety rule for this group that a dish could break — training, or an age, does not make food dangerous. The thresholds below are about the person rather than about the dish.

Not about the dish — about the person

Protein in a day

0.83 g/kg

An adult Context established

Per day, 0.83 g for every kilogram of body weight — about 58 g a day for somebody of 70 kg. This is a floor: the amount that prevents a shortfall, not an optimum.

European Food Safety Authority, Dietary Reference Values for protein, 2012

Salt in a day

5 g 2000 mg

An adult Context established

Under 5 g of salt a day, which is under 2000 mg of sodium — just under a teaspoon. A label usually gives sodium, and the two are not the same number: salt is about 2.5 times the sodium.

World Health Organization, Salt reduction

What is done, and what is not: There is no calorie target here: daily energy need depends on age, body composition and training volume, and a figure written without them is a guess that looks certain. The protein calculation is offered because it rests on a sourced range and a single input. Supplements, and rapid weight cutting in weight-class sports, are conversations to have with a professional.

This choice is not stored anywhere.

Diets

Gluten-free Suitable as it is
Vegan Suitable as it is
Vegetarian Suitable as it is
Lactose-free Suitable as it is
Diabetes-friendly It depends Free sugar. What it does to blood glucose depends on the portion and on what is eaten with it.

This verdict comes from the recipe\u2019s own ingredient list. The label on a packaged ingredient is always the last word.

Calculated nutrition

356.1 kcal
18 g Protein
44.2 g Carbohydrate
13.3 g Fat
17.6 g Fibre

Per serving, computed from raw weights as bought. Cooking drives water off and sometimes adds fat, and neither is accounted for.

composition figures unsourced · held in the system

After the heat goes off

Serving

Cold and sliced, with dill and oil over it, in the small plates of a tavern.

Keeping · 4 days

Four days covered in the fridge; if the surface dries, seal it with oil.

Cooling and reheating

Not reheated: a fava is a cold meze.

Freezes

Three months. Water can separate on thawing and thirty seconds in a blender brings it back.

What is left

Spread on bread, loosened with hot water into a soup, or used as a pasta sauce.

For a child

Broad beans are rich in protein and folate and suit a child from twelve months. For 12–36 months lift their share before the salt and chop the dill fine. A WARNING ABOUT FAVISM: in people with G6PD deficiency broad beans can cause a serious haemolytic reaction, and that is an inherited condition found around the Mediterranean. If there is any family history, ask a doctor before giving broad beans to a child.

If you have not got it

Fava beans (dry) → Chickpea Made with chickpeas it comes close to hummus but does not set: the chickpea’s protein gel does not firm the way a broad bean’s does.

Where to go from here

Boiling & poaching The method this recipe rests on
Fava beans (dry) What it does in heat, water and acid
Bulb onion What it does in heat, water and acid
Lemon What it does in heat, water and acid
Hummus Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Borlotti bean pilaki Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Red lentil patties Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Vegan Other recipes that answer the same need
For guests Other recipes that answer the same need
Weekend batch Other recipes that answer the same need

Taste profile

What it tastes like

The axes that define this recipe: sweet 30.

Sweet 30
Salty 8
Sour 14
Bitter 12
Umami 8
Heat 2
Richness 17
Aroma 25

This profile is computed rather than measured: the role-weighted average of its ingredients’ taste vectors, shifted by what the cooking does. The thin line is the database average on that axis.

Computed similarity