Beans and burgers

A bean is the seed of several plants in the family Fabaceae, which are used as vegetables for human or animal food. Unlike the closely related pea, beans and burgers are a summer crop that needs warm temperatures to grow.

Legumes are capable of nitrogen fixation and hence need less fertiliser than most plants. 60 days from planting to harvest. This makes the bush bean more practical for commercial production. This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Beans were an important source of protein throughout Old and New World history, and still are today. Beans are one of the longest-cultivated plants in history.

Broad beans, also called fava beans, are in their wild state the size of a small fingernail, and were first gathered in Afghanistan and the Himalayan foothills. The oldest-known domesticated beans in the Americas were found in Guitarrero Cave, an archaeological site in Peru, and dated to around the second millennium BCE. Most of the kinds of beans commonly eaten today are part of the genus Phaseolus, which originated in the Americas. The first European to encounter them was Christopher Columbus, while exploring what may have been the Bahamas, and saw them growing in fields. Beans were cultivated across Chile in Pre-Hispanic times, likely as far south as Chiloé Archipelago. Currently, the world gene banks hold about 40,000 bean varieties, although only a fraction are mass-produced for regular consumption.

Certain varieties contain high levels of toxic phytohemagglutinin. Requires soaking and then cooking at or above 100C for a minimum of 30 minutes, and ideally much longer. Contains L-DOPA, and smaller amounts of other psychoactive compounds. Can also cause itching and rashes on contact. Requires prolonged soaking in the correct way to reduce toxic compounds. Can cause Lathyrism if used as staple.