Elizabeth Bailey
Edamame is considered extremely healthy and is often served as an exotic delicacy. Here you can find out how the delicious soybeans are prepared, what health effects they have, and how you can grow edamame in your own garden.
Edamame conquer Europe
Edamame has become increasingly popular in Europe in recent years. The bright green beans originated in East Asia. In Japan, Korea, China, and Taiwan, they can look back on a long history and are an integral part of the food culture: whether as a snack or as a side dish, in soups and salads, whether served cold or warm.
Edamame is still cultivated in East Asia today, although North and South America have now also discovered the bean. However, the plant can also be planted in Europe – although this has rarely been the case to date. But the delicious beans also grow in your own garden.
With the skin on, edamame bear a certain resemblance to sugar snap peas, with the former being somewhat plumper and thicker than the flat sugar snap peas. When peeled, the small beans resemble oval peas. Edamame is neither snow peas nor peas.
What is edamame?
Edamame is unripe soybeans: The pod-like, green pods are harvested after about 75 to 100 days, just before they turn yellowish – at this point, they are about 80 percent ripe. Unlike soybeans, edamame is often sold in its pod. The elongated, green pods contain two to three unripe soybeans, which are also green.
What does edamame mean?
The term edamame comes from the Japanese: “eda” means stalk and “mame” means bean. Edamame is therefore translated as “stem bean” or “bean on a branch”. The name probably comes from the fact that the beans are sometimes sold in whole bunches in Asian markets.
In China, edamame is called ” maodou “, which means something like “hairy bean”. In fact, the pods are surrounded by a fine down. In English, you can sometimes read the term “vegetable soybean” – i.e. “vegetable soybean”.
How does edamame taste?
The oval beans taste mildly sweet, slightly nutty, and have a more subtle bean aroma than mature soybeans. Their consistency is also a bit softer and they are larger than ordinary soybeans (you can find out why in the section “Why are edamame so expensive”).
If you don’t have edamame on hand but need some for a recipe, you can use peas as an alternative – they taste a little sweeter than the beans, but have a similar consistency. Broad beans are comparable in taste to edamame but are slightly larger.
How do you eat edamame?
In Japan, they are traditionally served with a pod as a snack or side dish in bars and restaurants. They are sprinkled with some sea salt or chili and the beans are then pushed or sucked out of the pods with the mouth. You don’t eat the shells themselves, you put them aside.
The easiest method is to bite into the pod just behind a bean and then push the bean out with your teeth. You can of course also pick the individual beans out of the pods with your fingers, but this is a bit more laborious and doesn’t look particularly elegant either. In addition, the spices on the pods do not end up in the mouth but stick to the hands.
The unripe soybeans are also sold already peeled for use in salads, soups, and the like. In the section “Recipes: what to eat with edamame?” you will find delicious recipes with peeled beans.
Can you eat the edamame skin?
You could theoretically eat the shell – it is not poisonous. However, it does not have much taste and is not really enjoyable due to its tough, fibrous consistency and is also difficult to digest.
Can you eat edamame raw?
Soybeans contain some indigestible substances – so-called antinutrients. For this reason, like other legumes, they should not be eaten raw. See the Antinutrients: Is Too Much Edamame Unhealthy section for more information.
However, they are mostly sold frozen anyway and the frozen beans are already blanched. They only have to be thawed and are then ready to be eaten.
Where can you buy edamame?
The pods are available frozen, canned, and sometimes ready-to-eat with a sachet of sea salt in supermarkets and Asian stores. All of these products are already blanched. In the snack department of larger supermarkets and in online shops, roasted and salted edamame are also offered as snacks.
Recently, you can even buy edamame noodles. These are greenish noodles made from beans. Some varieties consist of 100% edamame beans, others contain other beans such as mung beans. They are prepared and used in the same way as regular pasta, but only need to be cooked for 3 to 5 minutes. Edamame noodles are characterized by a subtle bean aroma.
The preparation of edamame
When preparing the delicious beans, it depends on whether you bought them frozen, canned, or fresh:
How do you cook edamame?
Fresh, i.e. raw, edamame must be cooked before consumption. Frozen and canned foods are already blanched and only need to be thawed or warmed up.
If you want to serve the beans with the pod as a snack, first wash the pods thoroughly under hot water and then cut off the woody stalks if there are any remaining. Then bring a pot of water to a boil and add about 1 to 2 teaspoons of salt per liter of water. Then pour off the water, let the pods cool down, and serve them in a bowl, sprinkled with a little sea salt. The sea salt ensures a crispy bite and is supposed to emphasize the taste of the beans. Cooking in the shell ensures that the aroma is preserved in the beans. Follow the same procedure for frozen edamame with a pod, but only cook the beans for 3 minutes.
If you want to prepare the beans without the skin, it is best to buy frozen or canned edamame that has already been peeled. Because you can’t buy them fresh and without their shells. Otherwise, you would have to cook the edamame with the skin on first and then cut open the pods lengthways with a knife to get to the beans. Unfortunately, peeling raw edamame is very tedious and time-consuming, as the beans are difficult to remove from the shells. Canned edamame are ready to eat and are therefore suitable e.g. B. for the salad. You can use frozen edamame in warm dishes because then the beans will defrost as soon as they simmer.
How long does it take to cook edamame?
When boiled in water, the fresh, raw edamame with the pod is ready after about 5 to 7 minutes. They are not sold raw without the pod, but the cooking time would probably be a little shorter. Frozen, they are ready to eat after just 3 minutes – since they are already blanched, they only have to be thawed. Fresh edamame is steamed for about 10 minutes – frozen ones for thawing only for about 5 minutes.
Edamame contains isoflavones
Many of the health effects of soybeans are due to the isoflavones they contain. Isoflavones are plant substances that can have an estrogen-like effect – although these effects are much weaker than those of the body’s own estrogen. We have described how soy isoflavones can help with breast cancer and prostate cancer under the previous two links.
Edamame also contains isoflavones. One might assume that they contain less of it than mature soybeans because they are harvested earlier. However, researchers found that in some varieties, the isoflavone content at harvest time is higher than in mature soybeans:
For example, some ripe soybeans contained just 30 percent of the isoflavone content of edamame. Again, there were varieties that contained 26 percent fewer isoflavones than mature soybeans. According to the researchers, not only the stage of ripeness but also the variety is decisive for the isoflavone content.
What Happens When You Eat Edamame Raw?
The probability of accidentally eating raw edamame is relatively small because only fresh beans with shells can be bought raw. However, these are difficult to peel uncooked. The products from the can and from the freezer, on the other hand, are already blanched.
If you have actually eaten raw edamame, this can manifest itself in digestive problems such as flatulence, abdominal pain, nausea, and diarrhea due to the antinutrients it contains. These symptoms disappear after a few hours. It is not known how many raw soybeans one would have to eat to cause life-threatening symptoms of poisoning.
