What are Butter Beans?
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Butter beans, sometimes called lima beans, are a seed, and are considered a vegetable. They are of the genus and species Phaseolus lunatus, and have two main varieties. The first variety is a large slightly curved flat green bean that those in the Southern US would refer to as lima beans or the lima type. A second type of P. lunatus has smaller seeds and is often called the sieva type. When Southern US cuisine mentions butter beans, they are referring to the smaller sieva seed.
The lima bean appears to have first been cultivated in the Andes, while the smaller butter beans were more commonly grown in Mexico. Both styles are grown harvested from seedpods, where in fresh form they’re commonly green. There are some variant colors, among them red and orange. Because they are usually picked before ripening, you’ll find most “fresh” beans in a green color. The smaller lima beans are about .4 inches (1 cm) long, and larger variety lima beans can be about 1.18 inches (3 cm) in length.
There are slight differences in nutritional value between butter and lima beans. Butter beans have tiny amounts of fat, are higher in iron, and are slightly higher in calories. Both types of beans are excellent choices though. While you can find butter beans dried, frozen or canned, they are most preferred as a fresh vegetable side dish. They take about 20 minutes to steam, and are usually served with a pat of butter and a little salt/pepper and herbs.
You can find fresh butter beans in the US from late spring through the early parts of summer. Since they are popular, both versions of the bean are grown in other countries and may be imported at other times of the year. You can also usually find frozen butter beans, which make a good substitute when fresh beans are not in season.
In Northern US grocery stores, you’ll have better luck looking for lima beans, since quite frequently, butter beans is strictly a southern cooking term. Either large or small lima beans can make for lots of interesting dishes, and needn’t be restricted as merely a side dish. A lima bean casserole makes for a hearty vegetarian dish, and can easily be cooked in a crock-pot. Lima beans may be added to soups, to salads, or to a variety of other dishes. In the south, there are even many recipes for butter bean pie, which has a similar consistency and flavor to sweet potato pie.
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I was born and raised in the mountains of Virginia and we always thought of butter beans as a type of lima bean. The standard lima bean being large and green and used mainly in soups. The butter bean is very large and white and eaten alone or in casseroles. - anon52835
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Being a Texan born and raised, my experience with butter beans is as follows. To me, butter beans were the huge (1 1/2 to 2 inch bean), cream-colored when cooked and white when dry. They tasted very buttery and not at all like their "cousin" the much smaller, green limas. Loved butter beans best cooked with ham or "fatback" as my mother called salt pork, or as another poster said, "and white bread would be dipped in the bowl", for that wonderful bean juice/pot-liquor. In my family we never ate the smaller green (raw) limas and I didn't very often until I met my husband who loves them. Now we eat them every now and then but they are nothing like those great big ole buttery butter beans. Man, I've got to go find some to cook tonight! - anon49947
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I think the article got it backwards. I grew up in the south too and lima beans were little things that we hardly ever ate. But butter beans were big and lighter in color and very very good the way my Mema fixed them. - anon49727
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In the last couple of years I discovered canned butter beans quite by accident. I bought them by mistake in the supermarket when I was meaning to buy kidney beans. But it was a wonderful mistake, as I'd never had them before and they were wonderful. I particularly love them in a vegetarian meal when I make a salad with everything(i.e. salad veggies) in that I can find (usually more than five different veggies) and I add basmati rice with my own homemade french salad dressing, which is 'scrummy yummy' made with cold pressed olive oil and Bragg's organic cider vinegar, plus crushed garlic, salt, cayenne pepper, pinch of sugar, add the canned beans without the juice from the tin, mix it all up and voila! I'm always surprised at how fantastic it tastes and how light and healthy I feel after it. I'm not vegetarian but like a bit of vegetarian in between my other kind of proteins.
I'm just wondering about the nutritional content of it though, since lately I've been researching manganese and wonder if it's the manganese in it that makes me feel so satisfied. Do others know that manganese is in tea and it's the manganese that makes one feel maternal in it? - anon45051
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Being born and raised in Texas, our butter beans were huge. They had that buttery taste and we cooked them with ham hocks or just plain salt pork. The bean that I saw all my life was dried and white and about the size of a quarter, they were a somewhat flat and thin type of bean.
We didn't eat the green limas much as most of us didn't like them. I do like them now. So, is the bean that I grew up with a dried giant lima bean or what? - anon42559
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Our family grows butterbeans in South Georgia. We always have the question of "is it a butterbean or lima bean"? I am so glad it was explained so well in your article. I love the butterbeans and there is nothing like fresh shelled butterbeans! - anon40214
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The butter beans I ate as a child in Ireland do not remotely resemble lima beans; not in size, not in color, not in flavor. I have never found an equivalent in the USA for the butter bean I grew up with - but I can still find them in Ireland. - anon34360
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I must enter my most vehement opinion: butter beans are NOT the same as lima beans! Well, at least not in south-central Virginia, where I grew up.Personally, I have never found lima beans very interesting -- they have a mealy texture and a flavor that is at once bland and cloying and somehow suggestive of soap, and they are a decidedly unlovable vegetable, something you never yearn for, and are made to eat. Butterbeans, however, are superb. My father grew them in his garden -- their vines snake up the beanpoles and grow quickly, and their pods should be picked while still young and small. The butterbean (surprise) has a sweet, buttery taste, and is inexpressibly tender. My parents would cook the beans alone, or sometimes with Silver Queen corn, and white bread would often be dipped into the bowl. This is one of the great southern dishes. I suspect that my butterbean is the sieva type you refer to,but in a very young stage of development. My enthusiasm for butterbeans as I knew them in my childhood is born of a sorrowful, sentimental knowledge that I will probably never taste their like again. - anon22373
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I'm curious to know why I can't buy the butter beans in our area. I can find the lima-so will the lima bean taste like the butter bean when cooked? - anon21258
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Butter beans go under several names. They are mostly referred to butter beans in UK while in US they are more referred to as Lima beans. Other names include Bush, Climbing and Madagascar bean. Young pods with immature beans inside them can be prepared for a meal, when they mature, they are shelled and only the beans are eaten. Beans can also be dried and cooked for consumption. - milagros
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Written by
Tricia Ellis-Christensen
Last Modified: 17 November 2009
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