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.

 

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 do 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.

Basic lima bean and corn succotash gets a boost from summer bounty with the addition of sweet Vidalia onions, fresh tomatoes, bell pepper, okra and some smoked meat.

Southern Summer Succotash

Hope everybody had a wonderful holiday weekend with friends and family, and an extra day off today to recover. All the carbs and meat of late have me in the mood for some veggies and what a great time to introduce some summer succotash!

To be honest, I love a simple succotash mixture of baby butter beans and corn, maybe with a bit of onion and garlic, always some butter, and sometimes just a splash of cream. You can make succotash using fresh, frozen or even canned vegetables, so it's pretty much a year round dish you can serve anytime.