A-Z of unusual ingredients: Azuki beans

In British cooking, the role of the bean is clear-cut. We use Heinz beans for fry-ups, broad beans in spring salads, and white beans cooked with cider and pork. Beans are a savoury side on a savoury plate.

The resourcefulness of Japanese cuisine means the humble bean features in far more diverse forms, however, shaming us Brits for our lack of creativity. Top of the list in Japan is the soy bean - used to make tofu, miso, soy sauce, milk, flour and oil. Number two in the charts of Japan's most popular legume is the lesser-known azuki bean, with 120,000 tons consumed each year. It's russet-red, with a thin white stripe down one side, and is half the size of a kidney bean. Often, azuki beans are stirred whole through salads and bowls of rice, but their nutty-sweet flavour means that they are most commonly used in desserts.

The traditional way of cooking azuki beans is by boiling them with sugar into a sweet paste known as 'anko'. This can then be loosely mashed into 'tsubuan', or pureed and pressed into a paste known as 'koshian'. The different textures of the two are comparable to smooth or chunky peanut butter. But it's the taste as much as the texture of these robust, nutty-sweet beans which make them so popular. Back in 2007, Starbucks launched an Azuki Frappuccino, KitKat have done a limited run of azuki chocolate bars and Pepsi even brought out an azuki-flavoured soda for the Japanese market.

The beans’ bright red colour means they're often cooked on celebratory occasions. One of Japan's festive dishes, 'sekihan', sees rice cooked in the same pan as azuki beans, so that the white grains are dyed pink from the colour of the cooking water. Rich red azuki bean paste is also used to fill moon cakes, top 'dorayaki' pancakes, stuff 'wagashi' sweets, and flavour ice cream.

Azuki beans are embedded in Japan's cuisine but, unlike other Japanese specialities like sushi, it's taken them a while to reach British shores. Rare sightings are still mainly limited to Japanese menus: Wiltshire's Stanton House Hotel - owned by the Japanese car manufacturers, Honda - features an azuki bean and vanilla cheesecake on their Japanese-style menu and North London's Lanka cafe does a chocolate gateau with an azuki bean-base.

Things could be about to change for the much-maligned bean, however. They recently appeared on the menu at Dabbous, the Michelin-starred London restaurant known for starting and steering culinary trends. Dieters, bloggers and cooks working with food intolerances have also started experimenting more with azuki beans. They contain virtually no fat or cholesterol and are loaded with fibre and protein, making them a lovely moist bulking ingredient for a gluten-free brownie, or a new flavour to bring to a macrobiotic salad.

"I've enjoyed experimenting with Japanese-French fusion desserts using azuki beans" explains Reiko Hashimoto, author of Hashi: A Japanese Cookery Course. "The best one so far is a crepe filled with azuki bean paste, and served with a mango compote."

Japanese cooking teacher Hiromi Stone often cooks azuki beans into a traditional 'zenzai', "a sweet, hot soup which is a lovely warming snack" she explains. Whether the British palette is ready to embrace the savoury-sweetness of a soup-based Japanese dessert remains to be seen. But sushi had better budge up and make room: this bean is edging further and further into the limelight.

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