Sweet lupin

[raymondo]

Sweet lupins, Lupinus albus var. saccharatus I think, are supposedly low enough in toxins that they can be eaten like beans. Has anyone tried them?

[atash]

I did not see this thread until now.

Yes, you can eat sweet lupine beans. You can eat them like beans, or more commonly they are ground into a flour and mixed with soft wheat flour to fortify it.

Lupine seed is high in protein, and they grow cooler than soybeans do. It has a great deal of potential as a protein-booster for wheat products.

That's how I had it; in a cookie from Australia.

From my point of view, having deer-infested growing conditions, it is unfortunate that the whole plant is "sweet", instead of just the beans. As a result they are potential magnets for herbivorous pests, though interestingly the deer did leave them alone, quite possibly not being able to tell the difference between them and the highly toxic natives.

Breeding alkaloids out of the whole plant was intentional insofar as they are used more as animal forage than as human food.

There are a few problems associated with raising them as human food. One of them is that there are a great many immigrants in Australia and France from countries where the bitter types are grown. As a result, there is a great risk of contamination with bitterness genes. One way that the Australian growers have tried to deal with this is to breed their Lupines to have unusual flower colors. For example the Ozzie version of L. luteus intentionally has white instead of yellow flowers, and I think this is true of L. angustifolius too. The idea is that if some bitterness genes get mixed up from someone growing the bitter type nearby, the farmer will spot the wrong-colored flowers.

Another problem is that bitter types have gotten mixed up with sweet types in the trade. Merchants do not realize there is a difference and have sometimes sold bitter Lupine seed to millers who have ground it into flour and poisoned people.

I think that people are unlikely to die of Lupinosis; they'd notice the bitter taste and not eat much.

Instead what kills people is anaphylactic shock. Anyone who is allergic to peanuts is also allergic to Lupine. About 2% of the population of Europe, which is where a lot of lupine-fortified baked goods end up. There have been several people having keeled over from eating pastries with lupine flour in them. They were serving them without any warning at the vegetarian festival where I sampled them.

I think it is a very valuable crop and we'd like to try it again. It just comes with some potential hazards.

Yet another interesting issue:

Lupines grow cool. A few germinate in spring but most including the ones that are actually eaten germinate in the fall, live over the winter, and bloom in spring.

The types used for Lupine beans are all from the Mediterranean basin, with the exception of L. mutabilis from the New World, which is usually bitter and very hard to find in a sweet form anyway (though apparently they do exist as I've found references to them). If you try to grow them from a spring planting then it requires a long growing season to get them ripe. I think we should have started ours a lot earlier than they were started, more like February.

But anyway, because they are from fairly warm climates they don't tolerate all that much frost overall. The hardiest is Lupinus albus, the one with big white Lupinis.

Some versions of it have been bred for increased coldhardiness. These exist in France but are totally unobtainable here. The first of these was the variety "Lunoble" but I think there are a few others.

The advantage of an autumn-sown sweet Lupine is that for one thing it will ripen earlier (reputedly yields are higher too) but for another it will serve dual purpose as a winter groundcover. Plus it will get its taproot established during the rainy season (in mediterranean and maritime climates) and thereby not require any irrigation. This is a huge advantage.

Lupines do not have runners, and they grow only a small plant until late in their growth cycle when they shoot out vigrously. As a result they do not smother out weeds. So in an organic growing system there needs to be some planning for weed pressure.

I'll probably grow out some Kiev early next year, and maybe a few others. These are almost unknown in the USA, and I would not grow them on a commercial scale here due to liability issues. Just as a backyard crop. Oz is the biggest grower of sweet lupines and probably the only country that has such an extensive production. France is probably next. I don't think they are grown any longer in Germany where they originated in the 1920s.

[ottawagardener]

Hmmm, I've always been worried about these but then I've not read about the Kiev cultivar before.

[atash]

Dec 29, 2010 21:21:28 GMT -5 ottawagardener said:

I didn't realize there were cold hardy(ish) sweet lupins. This is very interesting to me. I saw the flour once for sale in a Spanish shop.

Your instincts in adding the parenthetical "ish" serve you well. "Coldhardy" for a sweet lupine probably means in the vicinity of around -10C, and that only briefly. That would make it valuable in my part of the world.

Wild lupines are common here including on my farm. I hope my new world species are incapable of crossing with the domesticated old world species as the local types are very poisonous.

They are also mostly perennials. Short-lived, but you know they do produce tons of seed that ripens easily and it seems a pity to waste all that protein.

[biofutur]

Hy Ray
go here if you want
el-mag.biofutur.org/2010/12/le-lupin-blanc/#comment-448
Le français ne devrait pas te poser beaucoup de problême.

happy new year

Dec 5, 2010 20:01:49 GMT -5 raymondo said:

Sweet lupins, Lupinus albus var. saccharatus I think, are supposedly low enough in toxins that they can be eaten like beans. Has anyone tried them?

[raymondo]

Thanks for all that info atash.

Merci pour ce lien-là Jacques. Il y a des informations intéressantes.

Kiev is the variety I've been able to get hold of here. I've sown some but we're heading into high summer so I doubt they'll do much. I'll try some over winter as well.

I've read that Lupinus albus is an excellent soil preparer because it has a long taproot.

[12540dumont]

Spoke to Dan at Seeds of Italy today. The Lupini beans are on a train finally to him (the container was stuck in customs). They should be shipping out of his place by January 24.

Dealing with Lupine Beans:

Cover the lupini beans with 6 cups of water and let them soak overnight.

Drain in a colander and rinse the beans with fresh water.


Place the lupini beans in a large pan, cover them with several inches of water and let them simmer, with the lid on the pan, for 60 minutes.


Drain in a colander and rinse the beans again.


Cover the beans with lightly salted water and refrigerate for 24 hours; then drain, rinse, cover again with lightly salted water and refrigerate for another 24 hours. Repeat this process for five days.


Keep the beans refrigerated and covered in lightly salted water in a sealed container for weeks.

Serve the lupini beans by draining them and tossing them with olive oil and black pepper. They are also good with a squirt of fresh lemon juice or in a green salad.




Lupini in Olive Oil with Tomato
1/2 c. olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped fine
3 Large garlic cloves, chopped fine
1 Large ripe tomato, peeled, seed and chopped
2 t. sugar
3 T. finely chopped pepper (Hot or Sweet)
2 C. cooked and soaked lupini beans

Heat the olive oil and cook onion and garlic till translucent, not brown! Add the tomato, sugar and pepper. Stir and reduce heat to low and cook 5 minues. Turn the heat off and let the beans cool in the skillet. Serve at room temperature. (We eat this as Crostini or in the summer as a bbq side.) My family served salted Lupini in summer with beer on 4th of July.

Regards, Holly



Is Cooking Required?

Whether sweet or bitter, lupini beans do not have to be cooked for them to be edible. While you might prefer to cook the raw beans to give them a softer texture, raw lupini beans are safe to eat as long as they are properly soaked and debittered. Due to the lack of strict, universal regulation of lupini bean alkaloid content, however, Giovanna Boschin and her colleagues at the University of Milan suggest, in a study published in 2008 in the "Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry," that this debittering process be followed for both sweet and bitter varieties to avoid any possibility of lupini toxicity.

[raymondo]

Thanks for all that info Holly. Based on that I think I would put lupins in the survival food category. Too much trouble to make it part of the regular diet. I read somewhere that there is a simple light test to determine whether there are sufficient alkaloids present to warrant the long washing process. I think it was that beans with alkaloids glow pink in ultraviolet light, or something along those lines. I'll have to track down the information again.

BTW, that recipe looks worth a try with any type of cooked bean. Thanks.

[12540dumont]

And the mother lode of all information lupin wise:

Lupin.org

Ray, these folks are from Oz!

I think this is going to be the food for a new century. Of course my plan is to brine them for my CSA.

They are supposed to be good for diabetes, and protein wise, they are hard to beat. With that thick seed coat, they probably store amazingly well.

[MikeH]

In the mid-nineties, there was some examination here in Ontario of sweet white lupines as a potential crop for Ontario but as the abstract says, "additional research and development are needed." It doesn't look like much has been done since then although there is a bit of evidence that sweet white lupin flour is on a major Canadian player's radar.

I'll grow four varieties - one sweet and three bitter - this summer in isolation just to get more seed. Up thread, atash talks about the possibility of crossing with wild lupins. We have wild lupins growing here so it's a question I have as well. I can isolate a wild lupin and a sweet lupin but how do I pollinate them? Suggestions welcomed.

I wonder if there's some way of using my bees. But then again, maybe pollination isn't a problem. Perhaps, insect pollination is necessary for higher yields? Perhaps the Vavilov Institute will give me some ideas.

Regards,
Mike

[raymondo]

I think lupins self, like many legumes, and don't need a pollinator. I grew the Kiev variety and never noticed any insects hanging around and they set seed without a problem. Of course, the same may not be true for other lupins or for your crop(s). As to interspecific crosses, I've read that Old World lupins (Lupinus albus and L. angustifolius) don't hybridize readily either with each other or with New World lupins.

[castanea]

Don't forget that Australia has done some good work breeding sweet lupins:

www.irwinvalley.com.au/about-lupins/about-lupins.aspx

[12540dumont]

Experienced Lupin planters,

As my lupin beans are just arriving now, should I plunk them in the ground, or wait till spring?

I'm really very excited about these.

[steev]

I've seen lupini beans for sale dry, but never had a clue. This starts to pique my curiosity, especially if they show potential as a winter cover crop. In view of the apparently lengthy pre-treatment, though, I suspect I'll only find them convenient worked up as a big batch and canned. I suppose acorns might be useful to me, treated the same way. Maybe horse chestnuts, too. What to do with all that salty brine? Hmmm. Nah! Think I'll just feed those last two to a pig and eat that.

[raymondo]

Jan 25, 2012 13:24:55 GMT -5 12540dumont said:

Experienced Lupin planters,

As my lupin beans are just arriving now, should I plunk them in the ground, or wait till spring?

I'm really very excited about these.

How cold does it get where you are Holly? I grew some sweet lupins over the winter which grew, although slowly. I wouldn't say they thrived and they certainly looked much happier once spring arrived. Usual night-time temps here are 15°F to 20°F, occasional dips to 5°F. We don't get snow cover.
If I was planting for a seed crop I'd wait till late winter/early spring. As a winter cover crop, I'd probably plant late summer/early autumn.