One might believe nothing good comes from a hot, dry Texas summer, but they would be wrong. Though most living things go dormant, making foraging and growing challenging, one unique tree continues to produce. That tree is the mesquite.
Many Texans, especially ranchers and landowners, despise the mesquite. To them, the thorny tree grows rapidly and reproduces prolifically, taking over an area and drawing on what little water is in the soil from other plants. For me, the mesquite holds a special place in my heart. While living on a farm in central Texas, mesquite grew abundantly in the woods where I walked almost daily. During one of Texas' hardest droughts, the mesquite grew green with many purple beans when the surrounding landscape turned yellow and dying. I harvested those long beans and made jelly and tortillas for others on the farm during those dry days when we all wanted to leave Texas and never return. These experiences help the mesquite to signify resilience, food, and community every time I pass by one now.
Picking and Processing into Flour
The mesquite tree tends to be a shorter tree species with a vast spreading canopy. The common species, velvet and honey, have a beautiful shaggy dark bark and long sharp thorns on the new growing branches. I usually identify mesquite by its short but spread-out stature and its fern-like light green leaves. The mesquite's leaves are compound bipinnate with at least twenty long oval-shaped leaflets. The seed pods will produce later in the summer, turning from green to red, purple, brown, or some variation of all three when ripe.
When picking the beans, I sample from different trees. The mesquite beans from one tree can taste wildly different from a tree just a few feet away. I like to find beans that exhibit an earthy but subtle sweet taste while avoiding anything that tastes bitter or tart. When trying them for taste, I chew on a piece of the bean until I get a good taste before spitting it out. The husk and peas inside are tough to chew.
After I find a tasty tree, I prefer beans with a lot of deep purple, no green coloring, and beans that are pretty dried and can easily break in half. Do not take beans that have fallen to the ground. Beans on the ground can pick up mold and aflatoxins that are toxic to people.
I dry them out completely since I am making flour from these mesquite beans. Drying out mesquite beans can be done in several ways. The quickest and my preferred method is placing mesquite beans on a cookie sheet before placing them in a 175-degree oven for several hours. My last batch took about five hours to dry the beans out to where they were very brittle and had no elasticity or flexibility. I have seen others dry their beans using the sun. Place your beans on a cookie sheet or in a bucket and place them in your car where they can receive full sun through a window. The Texas sun is so intense your mesquite beans should be dried out entirely within a day or two.
Once dried, it is time to grind the mesquite beans into a dry powder. Break your mesquite beans into halves or quarters before blending them in a food processor. You will be left with a fine grinded-down powder with the seed chaffs and bits of larger unprocessed pieces. Separate the fine powder from the larger bits using a fine mesh strainer and discard the larger pieces in the compost pile.
Now that you have well-grounded mesquite bean flour, keep in an airtight container and freeze until ready to use.
Mesquite Bean Desserts I've Tried
Below are three recipes thought out and shared by wonderful people that incorporate mesquite beans into sweet-tasting foods.
Mesquite Bean Jelly | Just A Pinch Recipes (I added Mustang grape to this jelly when I made it)
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