I’m bonkers about beans

A FOOD technician who was furloughed from her job during the coronavirus pandemic has set up her own business selling beans.

Amelia Christie-Miller, 28, from Swyncombe, says that the pulses not only taste good but can help tackle the climate emergency.

She has launched the Bold Bean Co, selling jars of beans from Spain. The range includes organic white and butter beans and chickpeas and she hopes to expand it to offer British beans and borlotti beans.

She said: “Beans are a great way to make food satisfying, affordable and delicious while providing for humans and the environment.

“They are good for us because they are packed with fibre and vitamins and good for the soil as they replenish it with nitrates and can really help reduce our carbon footprint. We should be incentivising more people to eat grains, beans and pulses instead of ultra-processed meat.”

Ms Christie-Miller first became interested in food when she was studying history at the University of Edinburgh and worked as a private chef to earn some money.

She said: “I would go with people on holiday and cook three meals a day for them and that’s where I started to experiment with ingredients.

“I realised that cooking was all I could think about but I wanted it to be something to help me relax rather than doing it full time.”

After graduating, she worked for Gail’s Bakery in London, where she dealt with food service, and then moved into food technology with Foodchain, a start-up working in sustainable produce.

She said: “I worked with the best chefs in London and really learnt from them how to use beans in the most creative ways.”

When she was put on furlough at the start of the pandemic in March last year, she moved back in with her parents, Stephen, who works for Savills in Henley, and Lizzie. Then she decided to turn her love of beans into a business.

Ms Christie-Miller said: “My obsession with beans started when I was in Spain on an Erasmus exchange. I was doing a lot of cooking and experimenting with fresh ingredients. One morning I was too hungover to go shopping and took a jar of creamy heirloom butterbeans out of the fridge. I remember eating them and thinking they were incredible and how tasty they were just by themselves. It transformed my view on beans.

“When I worked in the food tech industry, I learnt about sustainable agriculture — everyone knows that we need to reduce the amount of meat we consume and beans can fill that gap.

“I know beans have quite a dusty reputation and that people think they are tasteless but I also know what delicious beans taste like and I know more people want sustainable meat alternatives, so I’m on a mission to make people obsessed with them. With a lot of canned beans you buy from big supermarkets, you don’t know where they come from as the label only says ‘non-EU’, while ours are from Spain, which is why they taste better.

“ They are cooked at slow temperatures to preserve their nutrients and taste, seasoned and put in glass jars to preserve the taste. Regular canned beans are cooked with no salt and that means that when using them in recipes, people tend to add more salt than necessary.”

Ms Christie-Miller has launched a campaign called Beans Over Burgers calling for more money to be invested in alternative foods high in protein, such as beans, rather than ultra-processed meat-free foods.

She said: “If we can create demand for these foods, particularly those grown in the UK, we are not only promoting healthy, minimally-processed protein sources but we will simultaneously drive growth for British farmers and encourage the planting of crops which are pivotal in protecting our soils from degradation.”

For more information, visit https://boldbeanco.com