Iberia · Volume 04, The Cider and Cod Coast
Fabada Asturiana
Asturias
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- Hands on 3 hours · Waiting 8 hours
- Researched
- 16 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Fabes, chorizo, morcilla and unto or lacón, cooked slowly together, traditionally soaked overnight and never boiled hard. A single, precisely quantified recipe from a named in-tradition source was not obtained in the research behind this chapter, and the quantities below are stated as indicative, built from the technique described across multiple credible sources, not as a canonical, single-sourced ratio.
As tradition built it
Serves 6. About 3 hours, plus overnight soaking.
Ingredients
- 500 g fabes de la Granja, soaked overnight
- 200 g chorizo asturiano
- 200 g morcilla asturiana
- 100 g unto or lacón
- 1 onion, whole
- a pinch saffron
Method
- Cover the soaked fabes de la Granja generously with fresh cold water, add the onion whole and the chorizo asturiano, morcilla asturiana and unto or lacón.
- Bring to the barest simmer, never a rolling boil, per Rung 6.
- Cook slowly, "scaring" the pot with a splash of cold water whenever it threatens to boil hard, for 2 to 2.5 hours, until the beans are fully tender but whole.
- Remove the meats, slice, return to the pot, adjust seasoning with the saffron, and rest briefly before serving.
What a modern chef changes
The bean's texture protected with more control than a stovetop allows.
Rung 6
Method
- Hold the pot at a genuinely fixed, low simmer using a temperature-controlled hob or a water bath around the cooking vessel, reproducing the "scare" technique's protective effect with more precision than judging a rolling boil by eye.
- Cook the chorizo and morcilla separately from the beans, then combine at the end, so neither the beans' broth nor the sausages' fat overcooks the other.
- Finish with a spoon of the reserved, strained cooking liquid, reduced separately to a glaze, brushed over the meats before serving, for a more concentrated finish than the traditional single pot gives.