Fabada asturiana

Ingredients

• Fabes beans — soaked overnight600 g
• Chorizo250 g
• Morcilla200 g
• Cured pork belly200 g
• Ham bone1
• Onion1
• Garlic4 clove
• Saffron1 pinch
• Sweet paprika1 tsp
• Olive oil50 ml
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Soak the beans twelve hours in cold water and drain them.

   10 min

2. 2

   Put the beans, cured meats, onion, garlic and olive oil in a pot and cover with cold water by three fingers.

   8 min

3. 3

   Bring it up, skim, and drop the heat until the surface barely trembles.

   15 min

4. 4

   Cook two and a half hours, adding half a cup of cold water every thirty minutes.

   155 min

5. 5

   Lift out the onion and garlic, crush them with the saffron and paprika and return them to the pot.

   8 min

6. 6

   Salt it at the very end and let it stand half an hour before serving.

   8 min

7. 7

   Lift out the meats, slice them and serve them on a separate platter, with the beans in a tureen.

   10 min

About the dish

Fabes beans are large, flat and thin-skinned. They soften slowly and stay whole; ordinary white beans turn to purée in the same time.

The pot is never stirred with a spoon — it is rocked. Stirring tears the skins, and instead of a clear broth you get a cloudy mush.

The boil is halted by adding cold water every half hour. The trick is called "frightening the beans" and stops the skins bursting from sudden expansion.

Worth knowing

• — Do not salt before the beans are soft: salt toughens the skins and they stay hard inside however long they cook.
• — The morcilla goes in whole and is not pierced. Pierced, it disperses into the broth and turns it grey.
• — Fabada is better the next day. In Asturias it is cooked the evening before and reheated with a little added water.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

780 kcal

Protein

38 g

Fat

44 g

Carbs

56 g

More from Spain

• Paella valenciana — Rice in a wide pan with chicken, rabbit and beans. It is never stirred once, and the crust on the bottom depends on that.
• Spanish tortilla — A thick omelette of potato and onion, where the potato is not fried but poached in oil until it is nearly a purée.
• Gazpacho — A cold tomato soup blended with bread and oil into an emulsion — that is what makes it thick rather than watery.