Highest Quality, Premium Beans, Peas & Lentils

In 1923, L.H. Hayward began sourcing and selling the finest red beans he could find at the old French Market in New Orleans, and his son, Gordon Hayward, trademarked “Camellia Brand” after his mother’s favorite southern flower. Today, Camellia is a 4th generation family-owned company in New Orleans and has continued to sell the highest quality dry beans, peas and lentils available for 100 years.

Grown in the United States, these non-GMO beans, peas and lentils consistently outrank the highest USDA grade and meet the higher “Hayward Standard” — a term coined by trusted farmers the family has worked with for generations. Always freshly harvested the same year they’re sold, they’re cleaned six times before being packaged in our iconic cellophane bags. That freshness ensures our beans cook faster and are consistent in taste, color, and texture. Camellia products are also BRC-certified, meeting the international standard for food safety practices and proof of our commitment to responsible food production.

100 Years of Beans Done Right

Camellia Brand has been bringing people together to make memories and enjoy family meals for a century, and our customers are the most important ingredient to that success. Just like a pot of red beans that is slowly simmered and lovingly tended to, the best things in life take time. We’ve always put our heart and soul into everything we do, and that’s the recipe that has kept us going for 100 years and counting.

Cooking a pot of Camellia red beans into a state of creamy perfection is an authentic, soulful Monday tradition that people look forward to every week. It’s kitchen therapy — the ultimate comfort food — and Camellia is at the very heart of this tradition. New Orleanians and Southerners — by birth or by spirit — are devoted to the Camellia brand and have built a community around how to cook, season, savor, and celebrate with Camellia beans. None of our competitors can stake a claim to the same quality, tradition, or passionate following.

Here’s to another 100 years of beans done right!

Never mind moonshine – it’s potlikker that traditionally fueled the South, from the mountains of Appalachia to the tumbleweeds of Texas. Potlikker is the rich liquid left over in the pot after a long, slow simmering of greens (like collards, turnips or mustards) when seasoned with a bit of salty meat (like ham hock, smoked turkey wings or slab bacon). This leftover cooking liquid might seem like something to discard for those not in-the-know, but as it turns out, potlikker is divine, providing such a transcendent experience when soaked up by cornbread (or even sipped on its own) that you’ll quickly learn to savor it down to the last drop.

The original nutritious green drink?

Potlikker originated as a staple in the African American cuisine of the American South – a culinary tradition known worldwide as Soul Food. This nutrient-dense liquid was – and still is – used as a base for soups and other dishes. Simmering greens such as in this Potlikker and Blackeye Pea recipe for such a long time causes nutritive goodies like vitamin K, vitamin C, vitamin A, iron and a host of minerals to leach out into the cooking water, creating the kind of nurturing drink that should probably be bottled and marketed as a wellness elixir! And when the greens are simmered down with a few beans or field peas, it only adds to the flavor and the nutritive value.

The Great Potlikker and Cornpone Debate

But potlikker’s influence doesn’t just stop at the dinner table—oh, no. It’s played an outsized role in provoking strong feelings in Southern art, literature and politics over the years, creating plenty of interstate rivalries and public outcry over how best to eat the dish. Perhaps most notable is a 1931 squaring off between Atlanta Constitution editor Julian Harris and Louisiana Governor Huey Long. Harris crumbled his cornbread into the potlikker to eat with a spoon, while Long did the far less “fashionable” thing by dunking his handheld cornbread hunk into the juices. The entire South was thrown into a tizzy, but Long eventually got the last word on potlikker: In 1935, he included an explanation of all its merits as part of a long-winded filibuster on the U.S. Senate floor.

Bean Liquor vs. Potlikker

Similar to the debate over whether “real chili” contains beans or not, Southerners differ in their ideas of how to spell the word “potlikker” and what goes in it. While it’s well established that the broth from cooking beans is called “bean liquor” or “liquor” and that the word “potlikker” refers to the liquid from cooking greens, there are plenty of folks who throw field peas or beans in with their greens and still call the leftover liquid potlikker. Either way, home cooks and chefs alike are finding delicious new uses for potlikker these days, from cocktails (potlikker martini, anyone?), to potlikker vinaigrette for salads, to outside-the-box potlikker breakfast stews. And when beans and greens get together with plenty of potlikker? That’s the kind of second-and-third helping dish that’s warming down to the bones. In any case, don’t forget the cornbread!

Written by Sarah Baird, a writer and editor based in New Orleans. An award-winning former restaurant critic for the city’s alt-weekly and seasoned tippling enthusiast, her work appears regularly in print and online for Lucky Peach, Food52, AFAR, Pacific Standard, Saveur, The Atlantic, Eater, The Village Voice, PUNCH, The Guardian, GOOD, Liquor.com and beyond. 

From Camellia Band Navy Beans and Great Northern Beans to Large Limas and more, our favorite white beans are buttery, delicious, and deserve their own day of the week. Whether you’re looking for easy Instant Pot recipes, slow simmering stovetop favorites, Cajun cuisine or something with Mexican flair, you’ll find a delicious round up of white beans here. So, let’s get cooking.   

Café Reconcile’s White Beans and Shrimp

Café Reconcile is a destination lunch spot for a lot of New Orleanians, and their famous White Beans and Shrimp dish is a local favorite.

Great Northern Beans & Ham

We can thank our friend Chef Jennifer Hill Booker for this delicious recipe. It’s from her cookbook Field Peas to Foie Gras: Southern Recipes with a French Accent.

Creamy Bean and Collard Greens Soup

A quintessential comfort food, this Creamy Bean and Collard Greens Soup is full of Southern flavor.

Instant Pot Navy Beans

Featuring smoked sausage that’s browned right in the Instant Pot, this is a great weeknight recipe that offers big, savory flavor.

Instant Pot Southern Large Limas with Ham Hock

Lima Beans with Shrimp and Andouille

Simmering white beans with Andouille sausage brings amazing spices and seasonings to the pot, but adding fresh peeled shrimp in the last few minutes of cooking really takes this dish up a notch.

Frijoles Charros

South-Louisiana Style White Beans & Rice

What would a plate of New Orleans red beans and rice be without hot sauce?

That divine mixture of chili peppers, salt and liquid is a taste we just can’t live without! The pungent chili heat and tart vinegar profile of many Louisiana-style hot sauces add piquant flavor and contrast to thick, creamy red beans, and most people in New Orleans don’t eat red beans and rice without it. Do you add hot sauce when you’re cooking beans? Some chefs say the vinegar in hot sauce can prevent the softening of beans during cooking – and some don’t – but you can’t go wrong when you shake some of your favorite hot sauce on a plate of red beans at the table. 

Bring on the heat.

Also called pepper sauce or chili sauce, hot sauce is a mixture of some kind of chili pepper (and there are many kinds) with, most commonly, vinegar and salt, plus a variety of other possible ingredients like tomato, garlic, fruit, ginger or sugar. The intensity of the “heat” in a hot sauce, which can vary depending on the kind of chili pepper, is measured by the Scoville Scale. As an example, Tabasco’s classic hot sauce measures 2500-5000 SHUs (Scoville Heat Units) on the Scoville Scale, while another local favorite, Crystal hot sauce, measures 2000-4000 SHUs. 

Hot sauce and beans go way back.

Peppers of all varieties (as well as beans) were introduced to the Old World via early explorers to the Americas, who gathered seedling plants and specimens and distributed them worldwide. Archeological digs of southern Mexico, the land once inhabited by the Aztecs, unearthed evidence of chili peppers being eaten as far back as 7,000 BC. and domesticated centuries later. The Aztecs made an early hot sauce by blending peppers or pepper paste, herbs and water. As early bean varietals closely related to red kidney beans were native to the same region it is logical that they might have ended up in the same bowl – to rather delicious effect, no doubt! Somewhere along the way, a bottle of sweet peppers and water sat long enough to ferment, the predecessor to the array of fermented hot sauces we commonly enjoy today.

White Bean, Sausage and Tortellini Soup

White Bean, Sausage and Tortellini Soup is a great weeknight dinner because it cooks quickly and easily in an Instant Pot or multi-cooker. Featuring Italian turkey sausage, Great Northern Beans, fresh cheese tortellini and baby arugula, it’s got all the makings for pleasing kids and adults alike — and packs a nutritious punch. Just add a loaf of crusty bread, and dinner’s ready. The next day, fill a thermos with leftovers for a hot and filling school lunch.

Beans and Greens Soup

Beans and greens is a classic Southern combination, and a soup version is a delightful way to experiment with those ingredients. Our master recipe features basic guidelines and quantities and is meant to be personalized to your taste, encouraging you to try different varieties and combinations of beans, vegetables, greens, broth and seasonings. And whether you make it vegan, vegetarian or with chicken or beef broth, you’ll love the end result. For a complex, flavorful soup that’s incredibly satisfying, we used Green Baby Limas with a variety of onions and vegetables, plus vegetable broth. A real winner.

Split Pea and Ham Soup

You’ll love this heartwarming Split Pea and Ham Soup from our friend Mary Foreman at DeepSouthDish.com. Chopped onion, celery and carrot are cooked in bacon fat and combined with Green Split Peas, herbs, stock, a meaty ham bone or smoked ham hocks, and then simmered over low heat till the peas are broken down and thick. For over-the-top “croutons”, we made a grilled cheese sandwich with smoked gouda and sourdough bread, cut it up into tiny squares and added a sprinkle of them on top — along with crispy bacon crumbles. Talk about feeling all warm and toasty inside.

Yellow Split Pea & Butternut Squash Stew

Creamy, hearty and filling with a bright blend of spices and seasonings, our vegan Yellow Split Pea & Butternut Squash Stew is an aromatic dish similar to Dal. And its big flavor comes from the use of curry, turmeric, cumin and cinnamon. Along with onions, carrots, garlic and fresh ginger, the combination of spices and vegetables with the Yellow Split Peas and butternut squash make for a wonderful stew. A sprinkled of pepitas on top, and freshly mashed avocado toast alongside it add color, crunch and healthy fat – creating a super healthy meal.

Beef & Lentil Stew

Hearty and comforting, this Beef & Lentil Stew is a true crowd-pleaser. A great dish for Sunday dinner that’ll reward you with leftovers during the week, it uses boneless beef chuck cut into 1-inch cubes, along with celery, carrot, onion, spices, beef broth, diced tomatoes and Lentils. A bit of red wine and fresh Italian parsley are stirred in at the end for wonderful flavor. The meat gets tender, the lentils creamy, and the whole thing offers up delicious stick-to-your-ribs goodness.

The Secret History of Beans in King Cakes

Though a favorite part of current Mardi Gras celebrations, the custom of the “lucky” recipient of the hidden baby being responsible for providing the next king cake is a modern one. In pagan times, the return of the sun during the winter solstice was celebrated with festivities during which any man could become the “sacred king” of a tribe for the year if he found the bean in his slice of cake during the celebration. The bean was representative of new beginnings because the bean plant is usually the first to emerge from the earth after winter. After a year of the good life, the “king” would be sacrificed, and his blood returned to the soil to ensure that the harvest would be successful.

As was often the case following the Crusades, old pagan rituals were imprinted with new Christian meanings, and the celebration of the soon-to-arrive spring morphed into a celebration of the feast of Epiphany on January 6, when the three kings (la fete des rois) visited the Christ child. Though the meaning had changed the tradition remained: Flaky cake layered with almond paste was imbedded with a bean and topped with a gold paper crown. The recipient of the bean within his slice of cake became king -though now just for the day, and he wore the crown. He also got to live.

A New Orleans Twist on Tradition.

One of New Orleans’ oldest Carnival organizations, the Twelfth Night Revelers further evolved the tradition in 1870 when, instead of a simple red bean, they began inserting a gold painted bean into the cake they served to the young women of their “court” on the Feast of the Epiphany. The girl who got the gold bean reigned a queen for the season. This tradition continues today, though a wooden replica of a large cake is now employed. The maidens pull open little drawers in the cake’s lower layer which contain a number of sterling silver charms shaped like beans, and a single made of real gold. Choosing a silver bean makes you a member of the court; the maiden who finds the gold bean becomes the queen.

When the king cake ritual became fashionable in society circles, others adopted the tradition with their own king cake parties, often revolving around school and neighborhood groups. Many native New Orleanians grew up on king cake from McKenzie’s, the large local bakery chain that dominated all others until it closed in 2000. And though there are many stories about how the practice of using the familiar plastic babies came to be, Donald Entringer Sr. – the owner of McKenzie’s Pastry Shoppes – explains it thusly “We were the first to use the babies,” he said. “A salesman came in one day and said, ‘Look at this cute little thing. It won’t get lost like a bean.’ I’ve heard people say it’s supposed to represent the Christ Child, but that’s not true. It was cute. It was just a trinket that happened to be a baby.” Though ever evolving, the trinket in the king cake tradition is a beloved part of Carnival season and promises to be for many generations to come.

Put the Instant Pot to Work

If you own an Instant Pot already (or another brand of electric multi-cooker), or you’re considering investing in one – check out these tips, tricks, and how-to’s that’ll help you get up to speed and get the most out of bean cooking.

Bean Cooking Tips & Tricks

No-Soak Beans

There’s a Beans/Chili button on the Instant Pot for foolproof cooking, and you can increase or decrease cook time based on preference, type of bean used, and the recipe you’re following. Try our Instant Pot New Orleans-Style Red Beans & Rice, Instant Pot Pinto Beans & Ham Hocks, Instant Pot White Beans, and Instant Pot Black Beans.

The Scoop on Cook Time

Know that when you use the Instant Pot to pressure cook beans, it will take the unit about 10 minutes to come up to pressure. Then, it will cook for the amount of time you’ve chosen on the keypad. And then you’ll need to allow for 20 minutes on the backend for the unit to de-pressurize using natural pressure release. While it’s not ‘instant’, it’s an awful lot faster than stovetop cooking and a great way to quickly cook weeknight bean dinners.

Note that it’s important to allow the time for natural pressure release, because that’s what ensures the beans get tender. Once it’s done, you can turn the valve to venting to let out the last spray of steam, and then open the Instant Pot and dig in.

The Sauté Feature

Use Sauté mode for cooking as you would in a skillet or a pan. Just press the Sauté button, add some oil, and add the ingredients you’d like to sauté. Sautéing your meat and vegetables before pressure cooking adds great depth of flavor that you just can’t get with a slow cooker alone. Then you can simply add the rest of the ingredients for a pressure cooking dish. The ability to use multiple cooking functions in one cooking session (such as Sauté mode and Beans/Chili high pressure mode with the Instant Pot New Orleans-Style Red Beans & Rice recipe) lets you cook everything in one appliance.

The Right Amount of Liquid

Not much liquid is lost during the high pressure cooking process, so you’ll need slightly less than when you cook beans on the stovetop. We recommend 6 cups of liquid per 1 lb. of dried beans. Take care not to overfill the unit; heat and liquid can cause some foods, like beans, to swell and expand. Only fill the pot to the fill line, and leave plenty of room to accommodate for expanding rice, beans, quinoa, and other legumes and grains.

Fast, Flavorful Rice To Pair with Your Beans

Always rinse rice first, and drain it in a fine mesh strainer. Then use a 1:1 ratio of rice to liquid. Add whatever herbs or seasonings you desire, then lock on the lid, press the Rice/Risotto button and forget it. Let the pressure release naturally for 10 minutes.

Quick Homemade Stock

Scratch-made stock and broth is quick and easy in the Instant Pot. Make batches of broth and freeze for future use. Use it in place of water when you cook beans; you’ll save time, money, avoid preservatives, and end up with more flavorful beans.

Instant Pot New Orleans-Style Red Beans & Rice

Instant Pot Pinto Beans & Ham Hocks

Instant Pot Black Beans

Instant Pot Chicken Tinga & Black Bean Tacos

Instant Pot White Bean, Sausage and Tortellini Soup

Beans & Greens – A Dynamic Duo

Beans & greens is a Southern staple — and one of those classic combinations that conjures up fond memories of home-cooked family meals around the dinner table. Cooked down, seasoned and flavored in countless different ways, any beans & greens mixture is a match made in heaven — from Southern Blackeye Peas snuggled up next to Collard Greens, to Shiitake Mushrooms, Butter Beans & Southern Greens over cheese grits, to Pork, Collard & Blackeye Pea Gumbo. Here, we bring you another delicious way to cook the dynamic duo — with a Beans & Greens Soup “master” recipe that features basic guidelines and quantities but is meant to be personalized to your tastes.

In our Beans & Greens soup, we used Green Baby Limas, leeks, shallots, white onion, red onion, celery, carrot, bell pepper, fennel, vegetable broth and Swiss chard.

Beans & Green Soup: Step-by-Step How-To

This how-to is as simple as slowly simmering your favorite combination of beans, onions, vegetables, broth and greens. And whether you make it vegan, vegetarian or cook with chicken or beef broth, you’ll love the end result. You’ll start with a little bit of fat, add some spices throughout and end with a couple of tablespoons of vinegar for a wonderful, bright finish. For a complex, flavorful soup that’s incredibly satisfying, we used Green Baby Limas with a variety of onions and vegetables, plus vegetable broth. A real winner.

1. Sauté onions in fat. Our master recipe calls for heating up 2 tablespoons of your favorite fat in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat — like olive oil, avocado oil or butter. Then, add 2 cups of chopped onion, such as white, yellow or red onion, leeks, shallots or any combination of these. (We found that the greater variety of onions you use, the deeper the flavor.)

2. Add aromatic vegetables. Next, add 2 cups of chopped vegetables — anything from carrots and celery to bell peppers and fennel. Your choice. Then sauté all for a few minutes, add some garlic, and cook another minute more. The aroma is amazing.

3. Add broth or stock. Then it’s time for 8 cups of broth or stock. It might be vegetable, chicken, beef, mushroom or ham. Whichever you prefer will work; each will add a unique richness to your soup. (Got some homemade stock in the freezer? This is a great time to use it.) The master recipe is vegetarian, so broth or stock is where you can add a hint of meatiness, if desired.

Use whichever dried beans you have in your pantry. Got a 2 lb. bag? Double the recipe for an easy freezer meal.

4. Add rinsed and sorted beans. A 1-pound bag of rinsed and sorted Camellia Brand Dried Beans goes in the pot next (or if you have a 2-pound bag on hand, double the recipe for an easy freezer meal). You might like Great Northerns, Navy Beans, Lentils or Green Baby Limas. Any of our bean varieties will add their own special flavor and texture; to make your choice, think about how light or how hearty you’d like the soup to be. And keep in mind the cooking time required per the bean variety you choose. For basic cooking times for all of our dried beans, peas and lentils, refer to this bean cooking chart. Soaking, as always, is optional but not necessary.

5. Simmer till beans are tender. The recipe then calls for a sprinkling of red pepper flakes and bringing the whole mixture to a boil. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer till beans are tender — mashing as you go if you prefer a creamier soup.

6. Add greens and seasonings. Once the beans are tender, stir in 3 cups of chopped greens — from kale, collard, spinach or arugula to Swiss chard, cabbage or watercress — or any combination of these, plus the vinegar, which might be red wine vinegar, cider, champagne, mirin or white balsamic. Season with salt and pepper and cook until greens are wilted. The more delicate greens will have a lighter texture and wilt quickly, in just a minute or two, but heartier greens (such as collards or chard) may take up to 10-20 minutes. Got some leftover greens? Throw them in and cook till just warmed through.

7. Enjoy! When done, you’ll be rewarded with a hearty, comforting pot of soup that’s satisfying in every possible way. Warm, filling and full of protein, fiber and nutrients — who could ask for a more perfectly pleasing dish? Top a bowl with some fresh Parmesan or croutons, make sure the cornbread’s warm, and sit down to enjoy.