Can I eat them raw in a salad?

No. Raw common bean pods carry lectins that cause cramping and nausea. Even two minutes of blanching solves it.

Are frozen beans worse than fresh?

Usually better, unless the fresh ones were picked that morning. Freezing happens within hours of harvest and locks in the vitamin C.

Overcooking, or cooking them under a lid with acid. Add the tomato after the beans have taken colour.

Are they the same as dried beans?

Same plant, picked young. The nutrition is completely different: dried beans are protein and starch, fresh pods are fibre and water.

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Green Beans

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A cup cooked gives about 3 g of fibre for around 44 calories.

Raw pods contain lectins that irritate the gut, so they're always cooked.

They carry enough vitamin K to matter to anyone on warfarin (a blood-thinning medicine).

Loobia sabz comes from the same plant as dried kidney beans. The difference is that you harvest it weeks earlier, while the pod is still tender and the seed inside has barely formed. That timing changes everything. It cooks in minutes rather than hours, feels light rather than heavy, and goes into rice rather than a stew. Persian cooks cut the pods short, soften them in oil with turmeric and tomato, and layer them through chelow.

Known to botanists as Phaseolus vulgaris.