Steve Sando's The Bean Book is a great title, especially for beginners. Sando provides an overview of must-have pantry ingredients, and a comprehensive list of types of beans including heirloom varieties. The range of recipes include dishes from India, Greece, and more, and the type of courses covers appetizers to desserts, which is a nice addition for a typically savory ingredient. If you are a fan of legumes, or looking to get more protein and/or variety in your diet, this is a must-read!

Ich empfehle dieses Kochbuch allen, die ihren Fleischkonsum reduzieren, ihre Ernährung verbessern, ihre Gesundheit verbessern und die Belastung des Planeten durch tierische Produkte verringern wollen. Ich weiß, dass diese Behauptungen übertrieben klingen, aber das alles ist wissenschaftlich bewiesen. Und das alles kann man tun, während man Bohnen isst?!
Wenn man noch kein Bohnenliebhaber ist, wird dieses Buch einen dazu bringen, Bohnen zu schätzen. Wenn man bereits, wie ich, ein Bohnenliebhaber ist, wird dieses Buch mit Sicherheit die Fertigkeiten in der Zubereitung von Bohnen verbessern.

I highly recommend this cookbook to anyone who wants to decrease their meat intake, improve their diet, improve their health, and decrease the planet's burden on animal products. I realize these claims may sound exaggerated, but this has all been scientifically proven. And you can do all of that while eating delicious beans! If you are not a current bean lover, this book will make you appreciate beans. If you are a current bean lover, it will certainly improve your skill in cooking beans. I have been a Steve Sando and Rancho Gordo fan for quite some time, and while his beans are far superior to most others, these recipes will improve your knowledge and ability to cook all types of beans. I highly recommend this book because it is chock full of great information, and did I mention it is a beautiful book? My sincere thanks to Ten Speed Press for allowing me to see an ARC of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. It was a pleasure.

I picked up this book as we are a huge fan of any beans. We have a variety of beans here and thought it would be great to add a few more varieties and recipes to the mix.
The introduction gives us a background on the beans, how to grow heirloom beans, the cooking process, the spices and herbs that will make the recipe glow, etc.
The 50 heirloom beans with the pictures and descriptions were useful in identifying them as they have different names here.
There are about 100 recipes under 8 categories. The recipes come with an introduction to the dish, a list of ingredients, serving size, cooking instructions, and variations, and some recipes have a substitution beans list and even a vegetarian variation. There are recipes from several cuisines that sound interesting.
The book has a lot of vibrant and colorful pictures of the ingredients as well as the recipes. It would have been nice if all the recipes had an accompanying pic of the dish so that people new to that cuisine would know what the final dish would look like.
Most of the recipes are made using heirloom beans, many of which are not available where I live. There are vegetarian recipes that I would like to try out but will use a substitution beans.
A good book if you like beans and would like to try out new recipes with them.

I am a huge fan of Rancho Gordo beans. I love how this book is categorized into different recipes you can make based on the meals you would like to make. Every few weeks I try to make 2 pounds of beans and this cookbook is handy in giving a lot of ideas on what to make. This is definitely a go to guide to make an appetizer, soup, sides, main course and more.

Recipes from Rancho Gordo's acclaimed kitchen are included in The Bean Book by Steve Sando. It is embarrassing and regrettable that I had no prior knowledge of Steve Sando and Rancho Gordo Beans until I read The Bean Book. Now I'm hooked. When I saw this book was up for review, I was so excited. My knowledge of beans has grown tremendously and I have found many delicious new recipes. It never occurred to me that there was a cult following for beans! There was a waiting list on Rancho Gordo's website for their Bean Club. Hey Gordo, want to hook me up?

Bean lovers won't be disappointed with this collection of delicious, nutritious, and delectable recipes.

It's the dog days of summer in Texas, so I'm excited to see recipes for: Bean Salads, Beans & Grains, Baked Beans, Bean Patties, Sweets, Salsas, and Dips & Appetizers. Other recipes, such as soups and stews, will have to wait until cooler weather returns.

This book contains the following contents:

Introduction

50 Heirloom Bean Varieties

Bean Dips & Appitizers

Bean Salads

Bean Soups

Bean Braises, Stews & Other StoveTop Dishes

Beans & Grains

Baked Beans

Bean Patties, Fillings, Sauces & More

Sweets, Stocks, Salsas & More

Acknowledments

Index

Unlike many crops that draw nutrients from the ground where they grow, bean plants do not function in this manner. Nitrogen from the atmosphere is transformed into a biological form in the bean plant, which is essential to plant growth.

When making beans, there are many variables to consider:

How old are the beans?

How hard is your water?

How do you store beans?

What pot will you use to cook your beans?

What is the weather like?

There is a Master Recipe for Pot Beans.

THE BEAN-LOVER'S PANTRY

Dried Herbs and Spices

Chilies and Chile Powders

Vinegars and Oils

Other Essentials

50 HEIRLOOM BEAN VARIETIES

Alubia Blanca

2. Anasazi

Bayo

Black turtle

Buckeye

For all 50 beans there is a picture of the beans along with a write up on the bean. I will share with you about the Black Turtle bean.

BLACK TURTLE

In some regions of the world,

"beans" means black beans.

Black turtle beans have a rich,

fudgy texture and inky bean

broth that needs little more to

make a soup. It's easy to think of

them for beans and rice, Brazillian

feijoada, or Oaxacan enfrijoladas,

but they're also delicious in

salads or chilis.

Rancho Gordo's Midnight

Black bean is a classic, versatile

black turtle bean that hold its

shape through lots of cooking

yet retains its famous creamy

interior.

RECIPES: Norman Rose Tavern's

Black Bean Burger, page 231,

Midnight Black Bean Soup,

page 122, or Moros y Cristianos,

Page 186

After making a large pot of beans who doesn't love refried beans or hummus! There are recipes for Glorious Refried Beans and Simple Hummus.

ALL of the recipes look amazing!

I would highly recommend this book.

As a Rancho Gordo Bean Club member, I am already a devotée of Steve Sando and the incredibleness of heirloom beans. You'll often find me gifting Rancho Gordo beans to anyone just to demonstrate how delicious a deceivingly simple bean can be. But now, I think I'll need to start adding a copy of this book to the mix as well. The beginning of the book gives a wonderful background on the beans themselves as well as excellent tips on what to keep handy in your pantry to make them sing. Best of all, the base bean recipe is a classic that folks should have at hand whenever they just want an excellent pot of beans. I also appreciated that the recipes included in the book aren't overly complex, making ideal options for quick recipes with the beans as the shining star. I can't wait to have an occasion to bring over one of the delicious bean salads to share with everyone. I highly recommend this cookbook whether you are just starting off in your bean journey or are a seasoned pro with beans.

Thank you very much to NetGalley and Ten Speed Press for the advanced copy.

I love beans! I have always loved them, but since I began eating a whole food, plant-based diet, I eat them all the time. I immediately requested a review copy of The Bean Book when I saw it on NetGalley. Sadly, I was disappointed in its contents. Most of the recipes didn't excite me at all. The book also feels like a sales pitch for a certain bean company. I'm sure you could substitute with beans from a local grocery store, but it might be tricky to find a match with all of the recipes using heirloom varieties.

After the fifth or sixth photo I took to capture a recipe, I closed the reading app and called my local indie bookstore to preorder this. (I had already preordered copies for my public library.). This brings my total number of owned cookbooks to 8–2 of them ordered this year thanks to NetGalley ARCs.

The author always cites their own brand of beans (as well as some other purchase-able basics), but there is a bean primer and enough info that the reader can feel pretty empowered to swap as needed— many of the recipes are flexible with the type of bean used (any white bean, or, another firm bean, sort of thing).

Photos were a bit lacking— not all recipes had photos; photos weren’t labeled (in this eARC), so it’s not always clear what we’re looking at; and a few of the photos are just ingredients, kinda stock images, which seems like a waste.

Recommended above Cool Beans: The Ultimate Guide to Cooking with the World's Most Versatile Plant-Based Protein, with 125 Recipes. eARC from NetGalley.

Although the book comes form Rancho Gordo, I was pleased to find that one doesn't need to be a customer of their beans in order to enjoy this book. There's a great variety of recipes to be found here, ranging from familiar, standard dishes to a couple delightful surprises, like several desserts. However, what really delighted me was that overall, there was a general simplicity to be seen in many of the dishes, both with the ingredients required, and also the skill needed to throw them together, which left me unexpectedly eager to put several recipes on my to-try list.

Honestly, for both bean lovers and those just looking to branch out into adding more plant-based protein into their meal rotations, it's hard to see how it can get any better than this.

This is a gorgeous book, both in the photos and quality of recipes. After a thorough introduction to different types of beans, there are recipes for all sorts of courses and world cuisines, many of which I am planning to try or would love to make. I appreciate that there were both vegetarian and meat-centric recipes, as I've found a lot of bean cookbooks focus on beans as a meat replacement.

I was a bit disappointed that the types of beans suggested are mostly heirloom and would be very difficult to find. It seems the book was written by a company that sells heirloom beans; I wish that would have been made more clear. But, honestly, I've found that beans can be substituted very easily with other types of beans, so I'll still use the recipes.

Overall, this is a great cookbook that I would certainly buy.

So many good recipes. I've been looking for bean recipes in particular for adding quality plant based protein to my diet. This fit the bill.

I'm trying to eat a more nutritious diet, and beans are a big part of that. This book has so many delicious recipes for heirloom beans! I've tried the pot beans and slow cooker beans, and both have turned out beautifully. I can't wait to cook my way through every recipe in this book!

I was excited to see a cookbook dedicated to beans and with a title like 'The Bean Book,' this certainly felt like the perfect opportunity to add more beans to my diet. Unfortunately, this book fell into the category that many cookbooks do - the ingredients are not easily accessible. I did not realize that this cookbook comes from a company that sells heirloom beans until reading more into it. This makes most of the recipes very niche and not accessible to the "normal" person with access to average joe beans at their local grocer.

I did appreciate the basic recipes for refried beans and a simple hummus. Beyond these, however, the recipes are likely not something I would try as they are very time intensive and not realistic for a mom with two toddlers who most likely will reject my well-intentioned bean centric meal.

Overall, this is a beautiful book for the niche heirloom bean lover, but this was not for me!

Thank you to NetGalley, Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed Press, Ten Speed Press, and the author Steve Sando for an ARC of The Bean Book!

Lots of interesting options for recipes, a good ranges of cuisines, and lovely photos! Beans are having a moment, and this book is a stellar example of the versatility of beans and lots of great recipes to incorporate them into your diet. I also really enjoyed learning about the different varieties of beans.

Thank you Netgalley and Ten Speed Press for the ARC!

A better title would be “the heirloom bean book” or “the rancho gordo bean cookbook”. This is a cookbook made by a company (rancho gordo) that sells heirloom beans.

I’m not sure why they needed to write an actual cookbook (promotional piece?); seems like it would have been better to have these recipes on their website. I’m not sure anyone who doesn’t belong to their book club can use the cookbook. I tried to make two dishes with “normal” beans and they fell flat.

As a positive…

I had no idea so many different varieties of heirloom beans exist. The front part of the book is an index of them and gives several methods for cooking beans.

As for the recipes, while relatively short in terms of ingredients, are not particularly quick to make, even if you’ve already cooked your beans. It has the “a chef wrote this” vibe, with recipes being multiple paragraphes, sometimes 2 and 3 pages across. The two recipes I tried I couldn’t understand why the instructions were so long, so wordy, and so complicated. An editor or real world home cook or blogger needed to consult.

There is also too much oil in every recipe.

Finally a complaint about organization:

Instead of organizing the book by meal type, I would have preferred it be organized by bean used. If I want to use, say, cranberry beans, I can’t easily find a recipe to use them unless I have a kindle version with a search feature.

Special thanks to Netgalley and Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed Press for providing me with a copy of this book one exchange for an honest review.

As someone on a budget (and subsequently trying to eat more beans), I found this book to be highly informative. There were a broad amount of cuisines represented and the recipes all look amazing.

I really loved the recipes in this book! I loved how there were so many interesting options, and this really showed the versatility of beans as an ingredient in cooking!

I loved this book! When I think of cooking beans, my mind goes blank. Who would have known there are so many ways you can eat various beans in delicious recipes? The photography was great in this book as well!

I thought this book was absolutely beautiful and couldn't be better timed because I find everyone is really learning to appreciate beans right now. The photography was gorgeous and artfully curated, it felt like a lot of thought went into the presentation and organization of the different types of beans. I plan to make many of these recipes and love that I have new things to try that I can share with my vegetarian and vegan friends!