Succotash recipe

This succotash recipe is just corn and beans but with a difference.

I am sure you too have odd strange memories from you childhood that spring uninvited into the conscious brain periodically. I had one this week; creamed corn succotash.

I even remember the name, though it must be fully fifty-plus years since my father's Suffering Succotash last passed through my lips. Such was the power of it.

Succotash recipe

This page was last updated by Bernard Preston on 27th January, 2021.

  • 1 lb fresh, young green lima-beans
  • 1 large but not old ear of fresh-corn
  • Tad of butter and a large slosh of cream

If all members of the family have disgustingly low cholesterol, then some light cream; otherwise just a little butter. Actually the fat increases the absorption of the phytosterols. This who follow our slow-food, made fast philosophy will have no need for statins. 

  1. Pod the limas and boil them for about five minutes, until just tender.
  2. Toss in the young mealie-cob and cook it hard for about another five minutes.
  3. Allow the corn to cool sufficiently so you can cut the kernels from the cob; use a sharp-knife.
  4. Toss the limas and corn-kernels into a pot and add the cream or butter, salt and pepper.
  5. Add perhaps a slither of finely-chopped chili and garlic; or even a few slices of radish to give it a bit of spice.
  6. Bring gently back to the boil, stirring, and serve either as a side-dish or the main meal. It's delicious with fish, scallops or shrimp, if you are not a vegetarian; actually with any meat too, even a salad or bowl of soup.

The common South African lima-bean is perfectly horrid; hard, starchy and tasteless. It's white with pink stripes, and whilst I love legumes, from childhood I could not stomach these ones.

Then Papa, when I was about ten years old, went to visit his father in Pine Beach, New Jersey. And came back with a highly contraband packet of lima-seeds. Little pale yellowy-green beans, I still remember them like it was yesterday. We still grow them annually.

Into the garden they went, along with a couple rows of Hickory-King, our favourite corn. Three months later, aged still only ten, I had my first creamed succotash. I still remember it like it was yesterday.

I suppose we enjoyed it a few times, and then pah, no more. Papa cuckolded another man's wife and that was that; no more succotash recipes. A few other things changed too.

Sufferin' Succotash

Pink lima beans

 The succotash recipes that my father initially made from the pink variety, canned I think, were absolutely ghastly.

And then the smuggled-in green American lima bean seeds, enjoyed fresh from the garden together with our own corn; now that was good.

Oh, one other thing is memorable! I was made to sit on the verandah with a large bowl of pods and compelled to open them. Now that wasn't fun, but in retrospect, since I love tasty food, it was worth the effort. Quality food usually requires some effort. It was only many years later that the good-wife and I devised an easy way to shell large green beans.

I'm sorry, but from the can they are very second-rate; those who love good food will hunt at the farmers' market or grow them in the garden.

Succotash recipe

Succotash recipe is a wonderful nutritious way to boost your vegetable-protein with low GI ingredients. It's not fattening; it is the refined carbs that add inches to the waistline.

Nevertheless if you need to get a lot of pounds off, even the good starches have to go for a few months; then you go to the edge of what is known as ketosis and your weight will drop very quickly.

Lima bean pods.

Growing lima beans

Growing lima bean pods.

Growing lima beans has a long season but is otherwise without many difficulties; or get them from a can if you are desperate; they are an essential ingredient of your succotash recipe.

By whatever means, shell your lima. It's usually easiest for two people to do make succotash recipes together. One cuts off the thin edge of the pod with scissors or a sharp knife, whilst the other pops the beans out.

Better still, call the grandkids. We have a lovely time together. I crack the shell, and they go eagerly hunting for the beans.

Here's a less rigorous way of doing it.

Pour a cup of boiling water into a pot, and bring it again to the boil. Add the beans, place the lid on the pot and bring it to hard boiling. If necessary add some boiling water so the beans are just about covered.

Leave the lid off for a few minutes so that some of the water can boil off, and then replace the lid and simmer until tender. About fifteen minutes depending on how old the beans are. When tender, drain the limas, keeping the water for the corn, or mealies as we call them in South Africa.

Lima beans shelled

How to grow corn

How to grow corn also needs a large garden; it's for those only who are very fortunate. Actually, it is more about the choices we make.

These beauties are three-months old and as you see we are about to enjoy our first succotash recipe.

Corn on the plant

Easy succotash

Succotash recipe is a wonderful healthy way to boost your vegetable protein with low GI ingredients. It is one of the wholegrain foods; they are so difficult to get.

Energy conscious?

If you're energy conscious, and you want to make an easy succotash recipe, then

  • Drop the shelled lima beans into boiling water.
  • Simmer for a few minutes.
  • Drop the ear of corn into the pot.
  • Bring back to the boil for another five minutes.
  • Cool the cob and slice off the kernels.
  • Meantime, in another pot add a goodly chunk of butter, on low heat drop in the jalapeno, garlic and cooked lima beans.
  • Add the mealie kernels and simmer gently for a few minutes, adding salt and pepper to taste.
  • Enjoy; add a couple tablespoons of cream if your cholesterol is in order.

Actually, if you're eating foods like this, and following the dictates of exercise and cholesterol, you need have no fears of that bogey.

We use an induction stove because it's twice as fast as gas, and uses half the electricity of a conventional element.

Portable induction stove

Every family should have an induction cooktop stove. It's part of our Cyan Zone philosophy.

Glycemic index

Both corn and lima beans have a low glycemic index cooked in this way. Although they are fairly high in starch, the sugars are slowly released in the blood stream without producing an insulin rush.

What helps in particular is the protein in the beans; that keeps the total GI low.

If you are seriously overweight then this dish is not for you. The best way to lose pounds is to cut out the starch in your diet altogether.

Nevertheless, despite Bernard Preston's protestations that this succotash recipe is made solely from low GI complex carbohydrate, all of the ketogenic diets would frown on this nutritious food. It certainly has not affected my cholesterol, blood pressure, glucose or HbA1C, the measure of insulin intolerance.

It's chocolate cake that makes us obese and turns us into diabetics.

Honest injun

I got this recipe from my New Jersey cousin, and for me it's still untried. I have such good memories but fifty years is a long time. She sent some green lima bean seeds in the post and they are already about 3" high. It is a little late in the summer to be planting pole beans, but I am keeping my fingers crossed.

We'll be posting photos as they progress. Meantime, the mealies as we call them are in full flower. Corn on the cob is one of my favourites. From the can, or made into cornflour it's high GI, but from the cob it is very good food. I've put up a scarecrow and so far the vervet monkeys are staying well away.

Here's an update. Well here they are, and what an enormous crop we've had. The only problem is that vervets raid regularly, and stole all our sweetcorn. So just plain lima beans, very delicious straight from the garden and disgustingly good.

See at the bottom of the page for the link to growing lima beans.

Lima beans in a pot

Here is a second update. This year I bought a paintball gun. I only hit one big male, and now they stay away. This year we have had wonderful sufferin' succotash.

Green bean succotash recipe

Easy lunch recipes with succotash

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

- Michael Pollan

This one's tried and tested, and much loved. Green pole beans instead of limas.

GREEN BEAN SUCCOTASH RECIPES are an alternative.

Which ever way you do it, wellness is about more legumes for protein; meat is good when reared on grass in my opinion but we omnivores eat too much of it at our peril; or if it's corn-fed.

Grandma would certainly know about succotash recipes; they were probably daily on the menu in late summer when the corn was ripening and the lima bean pods were bulging with nutritious protein, to go with the carbs. Add butter or cream and you have a complete dish.

There is great concern about cholesterol these days, and rightly so. But those who enjoy their organic green foods daily, sufferin' succotash in season, with butter or cream, need have no fear of the dreaded cholesterol lurgy.

And in fact your homocysteine levels are far more important than cholesterol. Read the H factor. And that's dependent on plenty of greens and eggs for B12.

You don't have disgustingly low cholesterol?

Really it is not so difficult. Start with my wife Helen's salad every day, and making your own hummus. It's easy. Add a bowl of oats, with raisins or prunes for breakfast, and an apple a day, and hey presto, I can give you a reasonable assurance your cholesterol will start to behave. FOODS THAT LOWER CHOLESTEROL ...

Now doesn't that sound more sensible than taking statins. Apart from aching legs, this is one of the known side effects... an awful affliction for any man; and his wife!

Statins cause erectile dysfunction.

Creamed corn succotash

"Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognise as food."

- Michael Pollan

We've had a poor crop this year; a combination of a severe drought, with late planting, and low summer temperatures has meant they haven't done well; alas the creamed corn succotash recipe will have to wait for next year.


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Incidentally, the carotenes in corn and beans are better absorbed if there's also fat in the dish. So either add butter later, or cream it.

A more healthy way would be to add an avocado dish like guacamole on the side; delicious with succotash.

The year is 2016 and we have a perfect crop of corn and lima beans. Soon we'll have some photos of our succotash recipe for you.

Nutritious choice foods

Nutritious choice foods give you an even chance of reaching old age with your marbles and even joints intact. Add to that exercise for the body, and stimulation for the brain and ninety is not out of the question; corn and beans like this succotash recipe is part of the deal. 

They are rich in lutein and zeaxanthin, two phytochemicals that prevent macular degeneration.

Young, freshly-harvested corn and beans both have a place in our top 7 functional foods.

Useful links @ succotash recipe

  1. HEALTHY CHOICE FOODS
  2. Lutein macular degeneration
  3. Zeaxanthin macular degeneration. Web: https://tinyurl.com/3mw4a7pp
  4. Nutrition and benefits of lima beans

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Bernard Preston

Bernard Preston is a semiretired DC who doesn't like pain, or taking drugs, and is prepared to make the changes to ensure that.

That means plenty of exercise, spinal adjustments for aching joints, and nutritious choice foods; oh, and taking the time to make succotash recipe and contemplate the meaning of life.

We are Christians and worship in two venues. One is the little Anglican church around the corner, and the other is the Garden Cathedral, where Adam first fellowshipped with God, remember.

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Hilton, KZN

South Africa

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