We have been cooking the Midwinter Broad beans!  They are a great addition to the veg garden.

The cooked Midwinter broad beans are:

• delicious
• sweet
• mild in flavour
• pinkish when cooked

cooked-broad-beans

The Midwinter broad beans have:

• yielded well
• stood up well without staking
• been disease free

cooked-beans

The breeder of this strain, Malcolm Allison , said “the red-seeded character develops while the beans are young & good to eat, whereas the purple colour only comes as the beans are drying out & not worth eating.”  We found that the young immature beans had pink tips where the bean is attached to the pod.  But as the beans mature the pinky/red colour develops over the whole bean.  This colour stayed on the beans after they had been cooked by steaming.  One pod did not have the pink colour, and these bright green broad beans contrasted with the Midwinter pink beans after cooking and added to the picture on the plate!