This comforting, but also light, vegan dinner main is ready in about 40 minutes. A quick sauce made from cherry tomatoes, fragrant fennel, and garlic envelops the beans and makes them feel special – even on a weeknight! I love fennel with tomatoes and it adds a silky body to this dish. Along with the sliced cucumber salad, I recommend serving this with big, rustic pieces of whole wheat bread for scooping up the beans.
When in doubt, there is always a spicy, tomato-y, and bean-based thing to be made straight from my pantry stock. Since we always have them on hand, I’ve been making a simple sliced cucumber salad with a lot of our “bowl meals” lately, which got me thinking about a way to work this salad into a dish here. You just whizz the cucumbers up in a couple minutes with a mandoline.
Other white beans (even chickpeas) will perform similarly in this recipe, but I just love the drama of big butter beans. I reach for a silky coconut milk-based vegan yogurt to bring it all together. The cool richness smooths everything out.
Harissa spiciness varies a lot by brand. I used a local grocery store’s private label and found it mild enough to add an extra tablespoon. Use a paste you love and trust your own heat tolerance.
Saucy Harissa Butter Beans with Cool Cucumber Salad
Ingredients
Harissa Butter Beans
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 medium shallot, small dice
- 1 small fennel bulb, cored and diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 pint cherry tomatoes (about 2 cups)
- 2 tablespoons harissa (see note)
- salt and ground black pepper, to taste
- 1 cup vegetable stock
- 2 ½ cups cooked butter beans, drained and rinsed
Cool Cucumber Salad & Assembly
- 3 Persian cucumbers, thinly sliced (with a mandoline is perfect)
- 2 sprigs fresh mint, leaves finely sliced
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 teaspoon lemon juice
- salt and ground black pepper, to taste
- unsweetened vegan yogurt, to dollop on top (see note)
Notes
- For me, butter beans are available locally in 398 mL cans. I use 2 for this recipe!
- Harissa spiciness can vary by brand. The one I’m currently using is not overly hot, so I upped the amount to 3 tablespoons. Start with 2 and use your best judgement or simply add to taste!
- A lot of the flavor in this recipe is coming from the harissa. Use one that you already know and love!
- Yoggu is my favorite vegan yogurt for savory dishes! Thick, tangy, and creamy. Culina is another great one.
Instructions
- Set a large skillet over medium heat. Once the skillet is hot, pour in the oil and swirl it around. Add the shallots and fennel and sauté until soft and translucent, about 6-7 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté for another minute. Add the cherry tomatoes and harissa, and stir. Season with salt and pepper. Add the vegetable stock. Pop a lid on top and let everything cook/steam for 3-4 minutes
- Remove the lid and start mashing down on the tomatoes a bit to break them up. Keep cooking with the lid on until tomatoes are fully mushy, about 3 minutes. Add the butter beans and stir. Bring the mixture to a simmer. Season again with salt and pepper. Keep the butter beans on a low simmer, covered, for another 10 minutes or so while you prep the cucumber salad.
- Using a mandoline, thinly slice the cucumbers directly into a medium bowl. To the sliced cucumbers, add the mint, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Stir to combine.
- Butter beans should have a nice thick and chunky sauce around them at this point. Serve the harissa butter beans hot with portions of cucumber salad on top, big dollops of yogurt, and some crusty bread as well. Enjoy!
Thank you so much for this recipe, the meal turned out delicious! I am currently eating a portion while there is a summer storm raging outside, so cozy :)
It’s way too hot here, way too early in the season. This quick skillet dinner was on point last night and did not heat up my kitchen, so thank you for that! Easy, so tasty and filling. We LOVED it. I keep Cava’s harissa on hand– it’s got a lot of heat so I used about 2 tbsp and that did the trick. I served it with sourdough toasted with confit garlic. Ice cold watermelon for dessert. Yay summer.
Delish! Unusual but a delightful combination of flavors and textures.
Really delicious recipe, the fennel is perfect with the tomato and harissa. I swapped out vegan yogurt for plain greek yogurt with a little bit of lemon.
It’s always an investment to try a new recipe between preparation and going out to buy ingredients, and this was definitely worth it! I appreciate the thought and testing you put into each recipe – they’re always easy to follow and delicious ☺️
Julie,
Thank you so much for this review and rating. Really glad that this recipe was worth the effort on your end! And thanks for your note on using regular Greek yogurt. I know that folks in the future will find that helpful :D
-L
Not bean/salad-related but where did you get that lovely blue speckled bowl in the first photo? I love it!
It’s an old Ikea one!
-L
This looks delicious! Have you found a good source of dried butter beans in Canada?
Hi Meredith,
I buy the Cedar brand of dried butter beans at Food Basics (I’m based in Ontario). They are sold/labelled as Lima beans though! It’s a confusing thing. Lima beans and butter beans are the same bean sold at different stages of maturity. The frozen ones that are still green are what we traditionally know as lima beans. The more mature, larger white beans sold in dry form or in cans at room temewrpature (the ones in this recipe) are butter beans. The bags of dried beans labelled “lima” are butter beans.
-L