Green beans
The legume you eat as a vegetable. Fibre and volume, and one of the few vegetables that barely suffers from being frozen.
How to use it
With a hot meal, or cold through a salad with a dressing. Straight from the freezer is fine.
The best version
Snapping fresh: a good bean breaks with a crack. Limp beans bend instead, and taste of nothing.
How to prepare it
Boil them briefly and drop them into cold water, so they stay green and keep their bite. Cooked through they go grey and soft.
What it does
Green beans have not been studied in people as a food on their own. They are here because they bring fibre and volume to the place on the plate where a starchy side usually sits.
Watch out
Do not eat them raw. Raw green beans contain a lectin that irritates the stomach and gut, and cooking destroys it.