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Post by Deleted on Oct 1, 2012 16:10:03 GMT -5
I am thinking about getting some Lupinus albus and mutabilis seeds for next year. Does anybody have experience with them (or any edible lupine species)?
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Post by MikeH on Oct 1, 2012 16:25:05 GMT -5
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Post by blueadzuki on Oct 1, 2012 16:37:08 GMT -5
I'm planning to put in some mutabilis next year, as well as a few large white lupin seeds I found while cleaning (which are probably leftover albus). As for expierance, I only have any real experinace with pilosus, and that did not got well for me (plants kept aborting flowers and finally conked out before any mature pods were present).
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Post by 12540dumont on Oct 1, 2012 18:11:38 GMT -5
I planted Lupines last year and was suitable impressed with the yield. I planted them in the worst soil on the farm. I planted them very early (they can be planted like favas) IMHO. Remember I'm in Coastal, Central California so that makes a difference. They grow wild in Italy, so I figured they'd do fine here. Do not underestimate the time it takes to make them edible, but once cleaned, they make a great flour and a terrific pickled snack. After WWII the Italians would give them to their children to keep them from starving. They required very little irrigation and still performed well. I plan to increase my planting next year by at least 10 fold. Attachments:
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Post by bunkie on Oct 1, 2012 18:50:06 GMT -5
our lupines look just like those holly, aand they reseed every year in our dry summers and frigid winters.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Oct 1, 2012 19:14:34 GMT -5
I was asking minha sogra about lupines and showed her the seed Holly gave me the last time she was here. She said that they mostly grew them in the Azores as a green manure crop before planting grain. They only ate them occasionally at feasts and such, and they were mainly used as a snack food at that time. Apparently they were the bitter type because she said they boiled them and then left them in a pot with a pipe flowing a trickle of water into it to leach off the bitterness. Then they salted them and ate them out of hand.
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Post by atash on Oct 1, 2012 20:59:18 GMT -5
Or, grow "sweet" varieties. But warning: I don't think the sweet varieties will be critter-proof like the bitter varieties.
Holly, I wonder if you need some sweet seed. But you can't let it cross-pollinate with the bitter or it will be contaminated.
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Post by MikeH on Oct 1, 2012 21:42:43 GMT -5
The drought this year was tough on my lupines. The sweet variety that I got from Ray died. The Altrei lupines yielded about 70% less than last year. The TIFWHITE-78 that I got from ARS-GRIN was in suspended animation until the drought broke. Then it burst into flower and quickly produced pods. It'll be interesting to see if it lives up to its cold hardiness reputation because there'll be frost before the seeds are ripe. I'll protect it with a row cover if frost is forecast. I've got TIFWHITE-78 seed left so I'll probably plant out in early to mid-May and use a row cover if frost is forecast. I need to grow out seed.
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Post by castanea on Oct 1, 2012 22:10:48 GMT -5
I planted some but planted them too late when it was too hot and they did not do well at all.
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Post by 12540dumont on Oct 2, 2012 14:06:03 GMT -5
I do have sweet lupines, well as sweet as they get.
It is necessary to at least soak them through 7 changes of water over 7 days. My relatives salt brine them and serve them as lupini (with beer) in the summertime.
I haven't eaten any of mine, as I was trying to increase the seed stock. The gophers do eat them. I received seed from Raymundo and the USDA, and some from Sylvia Davatz. I also ordered everything that Franchi (Buyitalian) had.
I threw away the instructions and planted them in February. Our last frost was April. They came up just like wild lupines.
I also ordered some from the Desert Legume Project. All of mine are lupinus alba.
They've sent me some neat things to fool around with this year. Some Cicers, Phaseolus acutifolius, P. angustissimus and P. maculatus subsp. maculatus.
As a beaniac, I continue to add to my bean species.
I am interested in Lupines as they are both a famine food and a drought tolerant plant. I watered that patch twice (Leo says maybe 3x). They are also on some of the worst ground on the farm. (Where the tractor turns around).
Half of them I left standing after I picked the seeds. I wanted to see if they would come back from the root. I won't know till it rains.
These required no care whatsoever and improved the soil where they were.
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Post by steev on Oct 2, 2012 17:03:14 GMT -5
I keep scouting my produce markets for lupini seed, but none yet.
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Post by atash on Oct 2, 2012 22:08:19 GMT -5
There might be a misunderstanding. Statements 1 & 2 are mutually-exclusive. Sweet lupine doesn't contain any poisonous alkaloids. You can grind them into flour, or cook them, without having to leach anything out.
I've heard about people not soaking their bitter lupins enough, and getting a nasty surprise.
Some of the sources you described are unlikely to be "sweet" types. You can't grow sweet types and bitter types in the same field (well, you can, but that causes problems!); they'll cross-pollinate, and then you get cases of lupine poisoning, which happens on rare occasions in Australia due to immigrants bringing in bitter types from the Middle East or southern Europe.
That's one reason that Australian types have sometimes been bred to have off-type flowers: so that rogues are spotted more easily.
Lupine does have some nice food value: it is quite high in protein. Something like 35%; higher than most beans. It is surprisingly low in digestible carbs, and it adds "white fiber" to whatever you put it in. Lupin, the low-carb Legume!
One warning worth knowing about: it contains a chemical that is the same or similar to the allergen in peanuts. About 2% of the population of Europe will suffer anaphylactic shock from eating pastries containing lupin flour. I dunno what ratio the rest of the world's population would be but probably similar. Peanut allergies seem to be rather common...and for some reason typically rather severe. There have been kids dying from eating one chocolate chip cookie that had a bit of chopped peanut in them.
I don't know if lupin flour is as potent. Maybe not. Otherwise, you'd think people would drop dead and word would get around. I suggest caution.
There was an Australian company serving cookies containing lupin flour at one of the Seattle "Vegfests". No warning signs.
Not a reason not to grow or eat lupin beans or lupin flour, just something to be aware of, and something to warn customers about.
If you're wondering about my spelling: some ag congress decided that when you eat them, they're lupins. I don't care but I'm trying to stay out of trouble. The plant is probably still a "Lupine", which is a legitimate word in English meaning "wolf-like". Apparently based on the mistaken assumption that they "rob the soil of nitrogen", based on the observation that they grow in nitrogen-depleted soils. One of those "correlation doesn't prove causality" mistakes.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Oct 3, 2012 8:02:12 GMT -5
Rob, do you inoculate your sweet lupine? And if so where do you get your inoculant? A quick Google search done last time the lupine discussion occurred resulted in zero practical results, the only source was for astronomically expensive 50 lb bags of the stuff.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 3, 2012 9:18:52 GMT -5
In what way and for how long should bitter lupine seeds be soaked / washed? I know that they must be put into water to dissolve the bitter substances, but I've never found a good explanation on how to do it. If it takes at long time, then I'd probably just prepare big batches and dry or can them afterwards.
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Post by 12540dumont on Oct 3, 2012 11:31:59 GMT -5
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.
Or until the discard water no longer tastes bitter. With some sweet Lupini, this may take only 2 changes of water.
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.
Donatella Resta from Italy's University of Milan reported in the journal "Molecular Nutrition & Food Research" that neither cooking nor soaking is required for sweet lupini beans. In their 2008 study of a variety of beans and foods made with lupini, the researchers determined that commercially available, sweet lupini beans are safe to eat without any debittering due to their low alkaloid content.
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.
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