Inexpensive, filling and belly warmin', large lima beans have always been a favorite bean in the south, and now, they are made easy with the Instant Pot!

Instant Pot Large Lima Beans

Beans are a popular meal down here, and we eat them year round in the south. Heck, red beans and rice dinners are practically a religion down here along the Gulf Coast, and a diner staple every single Monday of the year, all year long.

Even with slow stewing on the stovetop, these beans don't require a lot of tending to, but factor in the Instant Pot, or whatever electronic or stovetop pressure cooker you favor, and they are done with little prep and in no time. I don't even saute the veggies - though you certainly can.

Fresh or frozen baby lima beans or butter beans, slow simmered in a ham hock seasoned broth with onion, chicken base, salt and pepper, and finished with a nob of butter or bacon drippings - a definite summertime southern favorite.

Southern-Style Baby Lima Beans or Butterbeans

You can use this for both butterbeans or baby lima beans, both of which I love.

Southern Style Hissy Fit Warning... I love all kinds of butterbeans - big and small and speckled - and I don't understand for the life of me, why some southerners get all up in a tizzy about what they think a butter bean is, any more than what constitutes a "real" cornbread or whether a hoecake is flour or cornmeal based.

The internet has opened the south to all southerners and revealed that despite what we thought growing up, there is no one south. Truth is, how you cook in the south and what you call things in the south, depends on what part of the south you grew up in and how your mama did it, which is more likely than not to be different from how somebody else's mama did.

Chicken and Butter Beans - smothered chicken cooked in a roux with baby lima beans, pictured here with creamed brussels sprouts.

Chicken and Butter Beans

I have been busier than a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs y'all!! We have the grandkids everyday now after school - which I love, love, love, don't get me wrong. Since our move to be closer to them six months ago, we have seen and spent more time with them from since they were born. It isn't that we were all that far away from them to begin with, but where we did live was off the beaten path and far enough away to be inconvenient for everybody. It does leave me with a small window of time in the mornings to get everything done though, and believe me, it goes by quick! I suppose that some of you moms know exactly what I mean.

 

Basic succotash is a side dish made using baby lima beans and corn. Pictured here with sliced fresh Creole tomatoes and pan-fried pork chops.

Basic Succotash

Succotash is a dish built around corn and some kind of bean. Here in the Deep South, that is generally baby lima beans, though there are many regional variations across the country.

It's a dish that's been around a long time, being taught to the colonists by Native Americans - though they would have originally used a bean other than lima beans, since limas came to us from South America a bit later.

The term "succotash" is generally thought to mean boiled corn kernels and originating from the word msickquatash used by the Narragansett Indians of Rhode Island.

Baby lima beans, stewed down to creamy perfection and seasoned nicely with bacon and ham, are as at home as a side dish as they are a main dish, when paired up with a nice garden salad, cornbread and iced tea.

Stewed Baby Lima Beans

I mostly prepare frozen baby lima beans as a side to be honest, like in succotash, but we don't eat them as often as I like, because they require some advance planning for cooking, and unfortunately I tend to forget about them! Unlike my beloved butter beans, it's a rare occasion where I make them from fresh or dried, but I don't know why, because they are just so much more delicious and worth the effort.

Southern Creamy Butter Beans (Large Lima Beans)

Large lima beans, or butter beans as we refer to them in my part of the Deep South, have a lovely creamy texture, and with this mix of seasonings, are just pure comfort food.

Creamy Butter Beans

Good old-fashioned, creamy butter beans, are a southern favorite for sure!

Not to be too confusing, Southerners refer to both large and small lima beans as butterbeans, although there is also butter peas to consider, a smaller pea-shaped cousin, and a pea that is actually a bean and not a pea, akin to other Southern peas, such as lady cream and zipper, and that some Southerners also call butter beans ... but not to be confused with buttered peas which is a whole 'nother thing - just to confuse the rest of the world, as we Southerners love to do.

Whew! You just gotta love The South.