Legumes: what a pleasure!

Do you like legumes, beans, lentils, chickpeas, broad beans, cicerchia beans, peas? Do you have only a few time to prepare them? Here some simple advices to prepare delicious Italian recipes with legumes. The legumes can be used fresh, dried or already pre-cooked in can. 

Most of the time I like to use the dried legumes but they need a long time of cooking that you can avoid following some simple advices: first thing to do is to soak the legumes in water at least for 12 hours or even more. What I do usually is to soak the legumes from the night before the day I want to use the legumes and I use them for dinner so the legumes are soaked for at least 18-20 hours. Another trick you can follow is to cooked them in the pressure cooker, in this way you will need around 30 minutes for beans and chickpeas, much more less time (around 10-15) for lentils,  cicerchia beans, broad beans and peas.

 

The fresh legumes usually need less time than the dried legumes such as 40 minutes for the beans and peas even less for the broad beans. The fastest way is to use the legumes pre-cooked in can especially for the beans and chickpeas.

I like to use the legumes to prepare delicious Italian first course like pasta with beans, pasta with chickpeas, pasta peas and potatoes or some traditional Italian first courses like pasta beans and mussels or pasta chickpeas and chestnuts. I like a lot also to prepare soup of legumes and cereals or soup oflegumes and vegetables or to use the legumes to prepare delicious Italian side dish or Italian appetizer. Soon I will show you the recipes of pasta with chickpeas and pasta with beans.