Oh Lupini Beans — happy memories and good times, my college days so many moons ago, in Providence, Rhode Island where a walk down streets of pastel-coloured wooden houses led to a Portuguese grocery store that I loved. And there I discovered jars filled with these salty Lupini beans from which your teeth rip a hole in the skin and you kind of suck the bean out of its rubbery shell into your mouth . (Is that it really? It’s been so long…) Kind of like edamame, though edamame has the salty pod you strip off with your teeth to get those nuggets of baby soybeans that can taste sweet when really fresh.
Something recently brought up a craving for Lupinis (Tremocos in Portuguese), and I began to wonder what they actually are, and whether I could make them. I somehow had imagined them close to fava/ broad beans, though their name should have easily suggested the Lupin family, which I’ve only known as beautiful blue cottage-garden, bee-attracting flowers that I’ve never grown successfully in this country of slugs and snails.
(This is a post I’m writing hypothetically really, as a round-up of the state of knowledge I’ve come to, to share web resources — of which there are not that many — and an invitation to anyone else’s interest, and a request for more information should anyone with experience happen upon this blog…. My interest, as readers know, is looking at global food traditions to widen what we grow locally, around the world, with Climate Weirding etc. in the name of both self-sufficiency and fun and experimental eating.)
Here’s a wonderful and easy Snapguide to how to prepare the salty snacks I enjoy so much. But, searching for hours on the internet I was unable to find the dried beans to order by post in the UK– and from abroad, the postage cost just made the idea prohibitive.
I’m not even sure precisely which lupin species have been used traditionally for food– clarity on this issue would be appreciated. These beans can be toxic, to humans and to livestock, if not prepared correctly, so there seems to be pretty widespread concern to grow low-alkaloid cultivars. Yet, the traditional varieties were prepared with over a week’s soaking in water that was changed pretty frequently, so the toxic alkaloids would be leached out. Hmmmm. If using these beans dried and ground, as for flour, I guess you’d want to either dry the soaked beans, which seems labour and energy intensive, or in that case really seek out the “sweet” varieties. I am signposting this issue as something for further research and understanding. There also seems to be an issue with allergies not being uncommon.
Full of curiosity, I wrote to Alan who writes the really great Scottish Permaculture blog Of Plums and Pignuts.
“Hello!…Can I ask you a question, as someone more interested in cooking/ preparing food than growing …. I’d like to figure out which lupins to grow for the edible seeds that are Lupini Beans/ Tremocos. In your opinion, would any species produce more seeds than others, or be more appropriate or traditional than others? I am aware of the alkaloid toxicity issue… If you have time, I’d love to know what you think. I’ve jumped around the web but haven’t found much really.”
“Hi Annie,” Alan replied. “Thanks for the email. It’s always nice to hear from other people who are interested in this sort of thing. The only lupin I have tried growing for food is Lupinus albus or white lupin, which really didn’t flourish at all [up there in Aberdeen, Scotland], to the extent that I didn’t even get any seeds to try. I understand that Lupinus mutabilis is the best one for eating, having been a staple of the Incan empire, but it isn’t hardy here. Tremocos (Portuguese name)/lupini seem to be Lupinus luteus or yellow lupin. [Somewhere I think I, Annie, read that they come from the blue lupin, Lupinus angustifolius— my memory could be faulty but it nags.]
The most productive lupin in this country is certainly the garden lupin, which is Lupinus polyphyllus. Unfortunately its seeds have very high levels of alkaloids. There are cultivars that I would like to try some day that have been bred for sweetness. Lupinus perennis and Lupinus nootkatensis also look like they would be hardy and might be worth trying.
I haven’t experimented much with lupins as in general they seem to be fiddly and take a lot of preparation. In addition the best ones for eating are often annual, which means that you lose much of what attracts me to the group in the first place. From what I’ve read, they seem to be eaten rather like edamame, but since I can get moderate crops of soya beans here I might be best sticking with them. Good luck with your experiments.”
Thank you Alan for that useful information! It also seems like the countries that have a history of eating lupin seeds are warmer and have longer and drier growing seasons than we have had in the UK….
Well, as I’m just putting this all out there in the webosphere as something of interest, here are some links I’ve found that might be helpful
On the Andean lupin
Plants for a Future (for one species, and there are others on their database)
and for a Canadian experience with growing lupins for food.
Illustration from Wikipedia Commons
Kitchen Counter Culture 
Hi Annie,
Love your post. I had a student give me a jar of lupins in brine a year ago and enjoyed them immensely. I too was curious about being able to grow them here and wondered about the difference between the ornamental Lupin and the productive Lupin. I find your post and Alan’s response very enlightening and it answers a lot of questions. The student in question was from Portugal and she had brought them back from there. I think alas the answer is there – we are just too wet with too short a growing season to successfully bring these pulses to maturity. Have you tried doing the same thing as they do to Lupins but substituting broad beans? I have found great success with broad beans and they are the only bean I know of that you can actually sow in November for a very early crop in May / June – which means that there is enough time to dry them out and store the. I am very excited by this years’ crop as used my own seed for the first time – so far so good. Cheers, Michele
Thanks Michelle– and I love the idea of trying to do the salty brine thing with broad beans! I reckon it would taste like kind of a cross between the lupinis and edamame 🙂 I have tried to ferment broad beans– was kind of awful….
Let me know how you get on!
That was a really nice post you wrote about lupins. I actually use them in weekly cooking, a recipe can be found e.g. here:
http://leckerbiss.wordpress.com/2014/10/22/delicious-mediterenean-style-salty-pancakes-a-recipe-containing-sweet-lupines/
In Germany, they are certain groups encouraging the consumption of sweet lupins. The plants grow really well in Northern and North-Eastern Germany, where they have sandy grounds not so suited for other crops. They lack the toxins of wild lupins and thus, do not need to be extra processed to get rid of the toxins.
Originally, sweet lupins are a variety that was raised in the 70s/80s (I actually will write a post about it soon on my blog – http://leckerbiss.wordpress.com/ -, and I’ll try to get the dates right till then) as food for cattle and Co. Yet, the flour is really good for baking (it makes everything lighter and softer) so it soon was used as an additive in common bakeries everywhere (e.g. for French baguette).
With the increased interest in vegan nutrition and plant-based protein sources, researchers and investors saw a chance for a local alternative to soy (and it is a local alternative to soy). In fact, the German innovation price was this year given to a team of researchers that developed a new recipe for a vegan meat-look-and-taste-alike based on sweat lupines. So, it is about to be turned into a “cash crop”.
I am trying to get hold of whole sweet lupines instead of lupine flour. Lupine flour you can buy in almost all organic and sometimes even regular food shops here. But, it is difficult to do anything with it but bake (maybe you can use it for smoothies), if you want to go vegan. It needs a strong binder (e.g. egg) in order to be able to make pancakes with it. In contrast, whole sweet lupines just taste great and can be used for so many dishes (I will soon post some more recipes).
Hope that helped!
Thank you so much, this is such useful and interesting information. Would love to try that flour.
You can easily buy it online, e.g. through amazon. If English as search term doesn’t function try German “Lupinenmehl” 😉
PS: besides developing some pasta based on luipin flour, I also started experimenting with the whole bean (see https://leckerbiss.wordpress.com/2015/01/09/basic-recipe-for-sweet-luipine-beans-or-kernies/) – which I recently stumbled upon. For some reason sweet luipine beans always have a slightly bitter taste. Do the traditional luipines you can buy also taste this way?