Colorful, Delightful, Healthful Salad!

[RosieC]

Originally Posted by estación seca

It's the red beans of species Phaseolus vulgaris that cause the most trouble. White beans have a third of the toxin, and broad beans (Vicia faba) still less:

Originally Posted by NYCorchidman

Did your uncle and wife thouroughly cooked the kidney beans and still got sick from eating it?

Actually it was white kidney beans they were poisoned with, however the toxin gets worse with cooking before it get's better. If partially cooked but not thoroughly cooked they are worse than raw, and even though the White Kideny beans are better than the red if cooked incorrectly they can still be bad. As I understand it they have to reach a certain temperature for a certain amount of time for the toxin to be destroyed, cooking them without reaching that temperature intensifies the toxin.

What they think happened is that they had frozen them raw, then threw some still frozen into a casserole before cooking it. They think the beans never got hot enough, hot, but not hot enough. Apparently they had thrown them in fresh in that way before, but starting from frozen they didn't cook enough