Haricot Beans

part of: Haricot Bean

Haricot beans are small, creamy-white beans with a mild flavour and smooth, slightly starchy texture when cooked. They are the bean behind baked beans — virtually every tin of baked beans in Australia starts with haricots — but they deserve to be known well beyond that tin.

Also called navy beans, these are one of the most versatile pulses in the kitchen. They absorb flavours readily and hold their shape well during long cooking, making them ideal for slow-cooked stews, cassoulet, minestrone, and white bean purées. They are also excellent in salads dressed while still warm.

Dried haricot beans keep almost indefinitely in the pantry and are very economical. They do need soaking before cooking — overnight is traditional, though a quick hot-soak method works in a pinch.

Farmed
photograph to come — from twenty years of markets, farms and kitchens

How it's made

Haricot beans are grown as an annual crop in warm conditions. The bean plants are left in the field until the pods have dried on the vine. The dried pods are harvested mechanically, and the beans are threshed out, cleaned, and sorted by size. They are then packaged and sold as dried beans, or rehydrated and processed for tinned products like baked beans.

Nutrition (per 100g)

Energy 292kcal
Protein 21.9g
Carbs 34.8g
Fat 2.2g
Fibre 18.5g Sugar 3.5g
Mass Distribution

What it costs the planet (per kilo)

Carbon ≈6.63kg
Freshwater ≈1428.77L
Land ≈12.34m²

≈ Estimated — worked out from a category-typical value further up its supply chain. Where this comes from →

Where it comes from

In the kitchen

Used as

simmered dried legume

Goes well with
tomato bacon onion thyme garlic
Classic dishes
  • Boston Baked Beans
  • Cassoulet
  • Minestrone

Keeping one at home? Track yours in your cubud →

Where this data comes from

Nutrition data from

FSANZ

How it was calculated

Analysed

Full credits, licences, and methods: the sources page →

Where to next

made fromHaricot Bean, seed goes well withtomato goes well withbacon goes well withonion goes well withthyme goes well withgarlic shares a sourceBaked Beans
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