Thursday, July 30, 2009

Why Purple Beans Turn Green

When purple beans are cooked, they turn green. Purple beans are purple due to a pigment known as anthocyanins, responsible for that purple, reddish range of colours. When cooking, a chemical change takes place. What happens is that the heat from the cooking breaks apart the molecules on the surface of the bean and exposes
the chlorophyll, which is green. Nature plays similar tricks with leaves in the fall. As the weather changes due to cooler nights and shorter days, the sugars stop providing nutrients to their leaves and the different pigments that lay under the green show up.

To take full advantage of the beauty of the purple beans, we suggest cutting them into a salad raw with a vinaigrette - beautiful and delicious.

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