If you’re looking to bring some Latin American magic to a cool autumn evening, Porotos Granados is a much-loved Chilean dish ticks all the boxes. Featuring some of South America’s best and most emblematic flavours – beans, pumpkin, sweetcorn and tomatoes, it’s a wholesome, warm, comforting and fabulously healthy option that is vegan, dairy-free and gluten-free and it looks beautiful too. Serve up a dish and let your tastebuds waft you off to rural Chile, where cowboys still ride home from work to feast al fresco on hearty cuisine like porotos granados under the shade of a pergola bedecked with jasmine and grapevines.
Porotos granados is the name in Chile for the Borlotti beans so widely used in Italian cuisine. They also go by the name of Cranberry beans in some places around the world. Mounds of these pretty pink beans can be found in Chilean fruit and vegetable markets from January to May each year. At other times of year you can buy them in their dried form.
The ultimate Porotos Granados recipe
Ingredients for porotos granados
- 1kg porotos granados (weight in their pods; once podded, the uncooked weight is around 380-400g) , removed from their pods and cleaned (you can substitute around 450g of ready-cooked beans from cans or cartons if you prefer)
- I medium onion, diced
- Sunflower oil (or your choice of vegetable oil)
- 300g of diced, peeled pumpkin
- 250g of cooked sweetcorn kernels
- 2 large tomatoes, peeled and chopped
- Salt and pepper
- Basil (fresh or dried)
- Oregano (fresh or dried)
How to make porotos granados
- Put the beans in a pan, cover them with water and cook until soft. Keep the water. If using ready-cooked beans, obviously skip this step.
- Meanwhile put the oil in a pan and cook the onion until it softens. Add the pumpkin and cook until soft. The original recipe I used suggested 4 tablespoons but I prefer to reduce the amount of oil so I just start with a little oil, then add a splash of water, stock or white wine whenever the vegetables start to stick.
- Add the beans, sweetcorn, tomatoes and enough of the bean water to make the dish quite liquidy.
- Add salt, pepper, oregano and basil to taste. You might want to give it a bit of pep with some merquén or other type of chilli powder or sauce.
- Cook until the pumpkin has mushed into the water and you have a thick yellow bean stew.
- Serve and savour the flavours of Latin America.
This dish can be made a day ahead, in which case the flavours will meld together even more. You can also freeze it.
You can serve it with chorizo (as in our featured image) or some cooked meat, or keep it vegan – up to you!
Wine pairing
I like to pair porotos granados with a light-bodied red wine like País, Cinsault or Pinot Noir or a layered and textured white like Chardonnay or a skin-contact (orange) wine.
