Gray Carioca Beans
These are a variety of bean I got from the Seed Ambassadors when they visited Europe, which seems like ages ago now. This year I was going through some of their seeds I hadn’t grown out yet, found these, and decided I better plant them because they wouldn’t last much longer. Because the seeds weren’t fresh any more, the rate of germination was low, but at least I got more seeds than I started with to plant another year.
I don’t really know much about them. When I got the seeds the label on the original package was hard to read, and as it turned out the name was misspelled. I showed it to a few Portuguese speaking friends, but none of them could decipher what the original name was supposed to be. Even typing the name I had into Google didn’t show any results. After quite a bit of online researching, my conclusion is that these are supposed to be called Feijão Carioca Cinza or Gray Carioca Beans. Carioca is the Portuguese word used to describe someone native to Rio de Janeiro. There is an apparently very common type of Brazilian bean called Carioca Beans, but what I have is a little different. I seem to have a special ‘gray’ variation of the standard bean that is normally light brown. Even though my beans are called gray, they are almost a little blue in color. They are small, roughly pea sized.
Does anyone know any more about this bean? Does anyone have any traditional Brazilian recipes that go along with it?
Comments
4 Responses to “Gray Carioca Beans”
**************
Leave a Reply
Name, email and website fields are all optional. Anonymous comments are welcome. It's nice if you leave a name, even if it's not your real one, just so we have something to call you.
See this post for comment policies. In principle, comments are not moderated here, but rather automatically screened for spam then posted. Because of a new caching system, there may be a delay of a few hours before your comment appears.
If you leave a comment here that isn't spam, and doesn't appear within a few hours, something has gone wrong. Please get in touch. Your comments are important and I don't want to lose any by accident.
Good old Feijao Carioca (carioquinha) from my Brazil, hehehe…
Hi Anita!
Nice to hear from you. Carioquinha… Another word that means the same as Carioca? Sometime you’re going to have to explain this all to me.
I’m afraid I know nothing about the bean but it sure is pretty. Have you have cooked them?
Hi OG,
It’s nice to hear from you!
No, I have just enough beans for replanting next year. I should have enough for tasting after that…
I’m off to see Tom in England in a few minutes. I’m looking forward to it!