| Prep Time | 10 minutes |
| Cook Time | 90 minutes |
| Passive Time | 12 hours |
| Servings |
6
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- 500 grams butter beans dried
- 2 onions finely chopped
- 4 cloves garlic finely chopped
- 1/2 cup olive oil Greek extra virgin
- 1 tablespoon oregano dried
- 1 tablespoon paprika sweet
- 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon paprika hot
- 1 teaspoon salt
Ingredients
For the Gigantes plaki
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|
- Soak the butter beans overnight for at least 12h in 5Ltr of water.
- Drain, rinse, and place them in a pan covered with 2Ltr of water. Bring to the boil and reduce the heat to medium. Simmer for 1h until tender and soft.
- Before draining the beans, keep 2 cups of their water. Tip the beans and the 2 cups of water into a large ovenproof dish.
- In a large frying pan tip in the onions and the garlic, add some hot water, then simmer over a medium heat for 2'-3'. Set aside.
- Place the butter beans with the water, the sweet and the hot paprika, the salt, the black pepper into the frying pan and simmer for 5'. Add the oregano and the olive oil and remove from heat.
- Preheat oven to 220°C. Tip into the large ovenproof dish and bake for 30' until the beans will absorb the flavours and the sauce will thicken.
- In a medium saucepan set over medium-high heat, pour the water and bring to boil.
- Stir in the salt and the rice, reduce the heat to medium-low.
- Cook for 10'. Add the olive oil and the thyme, stir to combine. Remove from heat, cover and set aside for 10'.
- Serve together.
Gigantes plaki is a traditional Greek mezze recipe, an accompaniment to raki, ouzo, tsipouro or even wine.
Beans are among the most nutritious foods providing myriad health benefits and rice is considered a healthy choice too. But beans served with rice is a power food combination! This is why my recipe, Gigantes plaki with thyme-infused Pilaf, is a power food combination! The beans amino acids are considered to complement the rice amino acids, thus, when consumed together, these two provide high quality protein!
By simmering the ingredients and not cooking them in olive oil until brown, and by adding the olive oil when the dish is cooked, just before removing from the heat, we make our food much much lighter and easy to digest.
We choose to pre-soak the beans overnight for best digestion and in order to shorten cooking time. Just discard the shriveled beans and any small stones.
I prefer beans with paprika and not in tomato sauce, because this way they are super digestible and light.