Adzuki Beans

Few foods serve double duty as dessert staple and health food. The tiny adzuki bean ably fills both roles. After cooking, mashing and sweetening, the tiny legumes metamorphose into a paste used in many East Asian cakes, cookies, candies, brownies, even ice cream. Even without the addition of sugar, adzuki beans have a taste both sweet and nutty, working well in savory dishes as well as desserts. It often turns up in sushi fillings and rice entrees, where it lends an appealing pink hue to the rice. Cooks appreciate not only the bean’s versatility, but its minimal soaking time, only one or two hours, as compared to the overnight soaks most other beans require before they’re ready for cooking.

A staple of the macrobiotic diet, this bush bean has a high protein and low fat content, comparable to the levels found in garbonzo bean. Adzuki beans are a powerhouse in terms of micronutrients like manganese, a mineral essential to a healthy brain and nervous system. The little bean is also packed with heart-healthy potassium, bone-healthy phosphorus, immune-boosting zinc and the folates that beat back an array of chronic diseases. Like all beans, the adzuki is high in fiber, which not only protects digestive health, but balances blood sugar levels and reduces the harmful forms of blood cholesterol.

It’s no wonder that mankind has been cultivating adzukis for five millennia. Experts disagree about the bean’s precise source of domestication, but the likely contenders are China, Japan and South Korea. All three of those countries are the top adzuki producers today. The bean is grown commercially in temperate regions around the globe, including the United States.