Spanish Food: Fabada Asturiana

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Where does Fabada Asturiana come from?

This is one of the traditional recipes that Spanish people like more and with all the reason, this recipe is completely delicious!! The way to cook this dish is simple, but not easy. There are several reasons that can spoil the recipe completely, though, the most important thing is to choose fresh and high-quality ingredients adding low heat.

This recipe come from the north-west area of Spain, from a county called Asturias, where meat and food in general use to be heavy but completely delicious.

When I learned to make this recipe, there was a funny and important word that everyone must learn if you want to make delicious beans and avoid them to peel, in Spain is called ‘Asustar las Fabes’, what literally means frighten the beans. Funny, right? Well, this funny word means that you have to stop the cooking of the beans with cold water to avoid them to peel or brake, it is strongly recommended to put a glass of cold water the three first times the beans start to boil. The reason why beans brake is because when the water inside the pot start boiling, makes the water inside the bean suddenly evaporate and, as the bean isn’t having enough elasticity, it brakes, that’s why we have to stop the firsts boils, to let the bean be elastic enough until the water inside them evaporate.

What is the origin of Fabada Asturiana?

The origin of this dish is about the 16^th century, when in Asturias people started to plant a type of beans that nowadays is known as ‘Fabes’. The origin of this delicious plate is humble, as usual, and the ingredients muster that fact: the ingredients are all rural, you can find all of them in the farms. However, there are some historians that say the origin is in the cities and has French influences that came from the rural paths that has always connected France with this region of Spain.

Although this is the most typical dish from this region of Spain, there you can find other delicious and similar dishes like ‘Pote asturiano’ and there is another similar plate in Mexico, called ‘Frijoles Charros’, probably the gastronomic influence arrived with the Spanish conquerors to America.

Ingredients:

500 g of white beans.
250 g of cured bacon.
200 g of ham bone.
2 chorizos.
2 blood sausages.
3 threads of saffron.
Water
Salt

Time of preparation: 4 hours.

How to cook Fabada Asturiana:

First step: Ingredients preparation.

The first step is to spread the white beans on a big cloth and review all of them to throw away the spoiled ones, after that we should clean them to remove defects.

Now we have to fill a bowl with water, put the beans inside and let them rest for 12 h. After this 12 hours, we should drain the water and reserve.

We should put in water for 12 hours too the cured bacon and the ham bone.

Top Tip: In Spain, people usually put the ingredients in water the night before they want to cook them so, when they wake up, they can take the beans out of the water and preserve them until cooking time.

Second Step: Fabada Asturiana preparation.

In first place, we add the white beans into a pot and cover them with water until there is a pair of fingers above the beans.

Then we stir everything to guarantee the water and the beans are properly distributed and put them on high heat until it starts boiling.

At this point, we put the bacon, chorizos, ham bone and blood sausages inside.

Top Tip: If the pot is short and width is better, because that favour the cooking and flavours mixture due to a better distribution of the ingredients inside the pot.

Top Tip: We should poke the chorizos and blood sausages before putting inside the pot to avoid them explode inside the pot, which can spoil our Fabada.

Third Step: Preparation of the saffron.

In this step, we are going to start boiling some water in a small pot. When it is already boiling, we remove it from the fire.

We put the saffron in a mortar, and smash it until it gets a powder consistency. After this, we add the hot water to the mortar and stir everything until the saffron is properly diluted.

Fourth Step: Foam, fat & saffron.

We will see that the stew is going to start foaming, we should remove this foam for some minutes, because this first foam contains undesirable foreign bodies. Doing this we also remove some fat too.

When all the ingredients are being cooked for about half an hour with high heat, is time to add the diluted saffron.

Top Tip: Look after the chorizos and blood sausages, they should be always in the upper part, if they go to the bottom they can explode too and spoil the Fabada.

Fifth Step: Low heat cooking.

After a half an hour of high heat, is time to slow down the cooking and put a low heat and add the salt.

We have to let everything cook for 2 hours now, stir from time to time. Now is when we have to Frighten the Beans two or three times when it starts boiling to avoid them to brake.

When the two hours are over, we should try the beans to see if they are soft and if we need more salt. If everything is all right we remove the stew from the fire and let it rest for 1 hour.

Top Tip: Be careful with the amount of salt!! Remember we have also added the ham bone to the stew, which has a lot of salt too. So, add the salt little by little, stir everything and try the stock before adding more salt.

Final Step.

Now we remove all the meat and the ham bone from the stew, and put it in a plate to cut everything in generous portions and let everything ready for the final presentation.