The versatile bean

Red is the colour of good luck in China. Whether this is one of the reasons the adzuki bean is so widely consumed is open to speculation. What is sure is that the beans are used in a huge variety of preparations and dishes, both sweet and savoury. These legumes, which are said to be the most yang of the bean family, have a sweet, nutty flavour when cooked.

In China, the adzuki bean is used in red bean soup, salads, red bean porridge and even some types of tea. The beans can even be ground up to make sweet cakes or used as flavouring for ice creams and pastries. They are the basis of red bean paste, which is an ingredient in so many Chinese dishes, and the paste can also be sweet or savoury. Adzuki paste is used for many traditional dishes such as dumplings, zongzi (eaten on the occasion of the Dragon boat races), moon cakes (eaten at the mid-autumn festival) and even for red bean ice.

A huge amount of the adzuki beans grown or imported into Japan is used for making an or azuki-an, a sweet bean paste, a little like peanut butter, which is used for filling snacks (like dorayaki), cakes, dumplings and doughnuts. An is also the main ingredient in traditional wagashi sweets for the tea ceremony and has recently begun to be used in frozen desserts.

In India, dishes using adzuki beans are commonly found in northern and western India, in regions such as Punjab, Gujarat and Maharashtra, where red beans go under the name of ravaa’n in Punjabi, chori in Gujarathi and Lal Chavali (which means red cowpea) in Marathi.

In these areas, adzuki are usually prepared in savoury dishes and are often sold as street food.