Butter Bean (canned)

Why butter bean (canned) is rated low

Canned butter beans are low at ½ cup (70g), and the record shows no FODMAP subgroup raised at that serving. This is one of the pages where the climb is the whole story: at ⅞ cup (120g) the same beans are high. That is not a big jump in the bowl, which is exactly why butter beans catch people out. A generous ladle into a stew, or a second helping of a bean salad, moves from the low rung to the high one without the plate looking very different. ½ cup (70g) is the amount the low rating describes.

What changes your risk

• Where you are on the ladder ½ cup (70g) is low and ⅞ cup (120g) is high. There is no comfortable middle written into this data, so the measured half cup is the serving to work with.
• Drain and rinse the tin Water soluble FODMAPs leach out of the beans into the canning liquid, so tip the tin into a sieve, let the liquid run off completely, then run cold water over the beans for about half a minute and shake them dry. Cooking them in their own tinned liquid puts back what draining takes away.
• Beans boiled from dried Canned and rinsed beans and beans cooked from dried are not the same food for this purpose. The servings on this page describe the canned form.
• Hidden onion and garlic Butter beans usually arrive in a stew, a braise or a bean salad, and the stock cube, the sofrito base or the dressing is often where onion and garlic get in. Garlic infused oil carries the flavour without them, as long as no solid pieces are left in the oil.
• The rest of the meal No subgroup is raised for this food, so it is the total FODMAP load of the sitting that matters. A half cup of butter beans plus a second legume plus ordinary wheat bread stacks up even though each serving looks modest.

What else works

Because ⅞ cup (120g) is high, the answer to wanting a bigger bowl is not more beans. Keep the beans at ½ cup (70g) and bulk out the dish with things that carry the same comfort: potato, rice, quinoa, polenta or buckwheat under a stew, carrot, zucchini, green beans and bok choy through it, and firm tofu, eggs, plain meat, poultry or fish for the protein. A scatter of walnuts or pumpkin seeds gives a bean salad texture without adding legume. Do not solve it with another legume, so chickpeas, lentils, kidney beans and baked beans at ordinary servings are not the way to stretch the dish, and cauliflower and mushroom are not the vegetables to fill the gap with.

How to keep it low

Measure the beans out before they go anywhere near the pot, because once they are in a stew nobody is portioning by half cups. Drain and rinse the whole tin at once, then divide it, keeping ½ cup (70g) per person and storing the remainder in fresh water in the fridge for a couple of days rather than in the tinned liquid. If you are cooking for a table, count servings first and choose a tin size that matches instead of scaling up the beans to fill the pan. When eating out, bean stews and cassoulets are usually built on an onion and garlic base, so ask what the base is rather than assuming the beans are the only variable.

Common questions

how much canned butter beans can you eat on low fodmap

½ cup (70g) is the tested low serving. At ⅞ cup (120g) canned butter beans are high, so the half cup is the amount to keep to.

when do butter beans become high fodmap

At ⅞ cup (120g) in the published serving data. The step from ½ cup (70g) to ⅞ cup (120g) takes them from low to high.

do you need to rinse canned butter beans

Yes. Water soluble FODMAPs leach into the canning liquid, so draining the tin and rinsing the beans under cold water before cooking is worth doing every time.

are dried butter beans the same as canned

No. The servings here describe the canned form, and beans boiled from dried are a different preparation, so do not carry the ½ cup (70g) figure across to them.