12 Bean Alternatives to Goya (Plus Rice!)

The early days of the pandemic could be traced through evolving shortages: As Americans stocked their larders with the essentials of personal hygiene, boredom-baking, and nutritious meals, toilet paper started to run out, followed by yeast flour and beans. But just as supermarket shelves seemed to be recovering their usual abundance, July brought a bean-brand uproar that sent people scrambling for alternatives. (We’re referring to President Trump, his daughter Ivanka, and a senior adviser possibly violating government ethics standards by posing with Goya Foods products on Instagram, after the brand’s CEO angered many immigrants and Latino customers by publicly praising Trump.)

Honestly, though, no scrambling should have been necessary. There are innumerable sources of the humble, globally relevant bean—a nitrogen-fixing, drought-resistant staple food of indigenous North, South, and Central America (tepary, lima, kidney), the Middle East and the broader Mediterranean (fava), Africa (cowpea), and Asia (soy, mung). These sources include BIPOC-owned and operated companies, those that support farmer collectives in places like Mexico and Cambodia, and even small-scale farmers who prioritize sustainable growing methods and local foodways. And since a bean is infrequently a standalone ingredient in a meal, our below roundup also includes some producers of the bean’s common companions: rice and corn. 

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Located on the Gila River (Pima) Indian Reservation in Arizona, Ramona Farms is the labor and love of the Button family, which has been growing three varieties of high-protein, drought-tolerant tepary beans—white, the rare brown, and black—in the Sonoran Desert for years. The Buttons also grow heirloom pima corn, which—along with the beans and their third “sister,” squash—comprise the backbone of “Sioux Chef” Sean Sherman’s Three Sister’s Mash. Alternately, you could serve a plain-old batch of simply simmered and seasoned beans with cornbread made from Bow & Arrow Brand’s non-GMO yellow, white, or blue cornmeal. The latter products support the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe in Colorado—they’re grown and milled on the reservation, says director of operations Simon Martinez, and also provide jobs for tribe members. They’re available to retail consumers, in one-pound and 24-ounce bags, via Tribe to Table.

For more than two decades, Columbia, South Carolina’s Anson Mills has been on a mission to revive heirloom grains of the Lowcountry. And it’s succeeded. Thanks to the efforts of founder Glenn Roberts and a host of research partners and other enthusiasts, Carolina gold rice—the rice that South Carolina’s 18th-century slave-based fortune was built upon—was rematriated to the region and is now widely available. When paired with the company’s West African Sea Island red peas, it’s the base for an insurmountable bowl of Gullah staple Hoppin’ John. Another South Carolina farm and mill, on Edisto Island, Geechie Boy sells various other Sea Island products, such as Charleston gold rice from the White House Plantation and black-eyed peas from its own fields. 

Familiar to New Yorkers who frequent the grain stands at GrowNYC farmers' markets—part of a years’-long, concerted effort to revive regional grains in the Northeast—Vermont Bean Crafters' cannellini, cranberry, Jacob’s Cattle, soldier, marafax, yellow eye, and Krimson beans are sourced from small organic farms across, mostly, New England. They offer plenty of fodder for everything from baked beans to hearty soups and veg-based burgers; in fact, the company crafts one of its own patties from black turtle beans. If you can’t get to the grain stand in person, reach out through the company’s website to see about placing an online order.

In a similar, hyper-local vein, Purple Mountain Grown, representing 16 years’ worth of effort from naturopathic doctor Nazirahk Amen and his family, supplies Washington, DC–area farmers' markets with black and pinto beans in season as well as an assortment of dryland-grown, unhulled brown rices. Long-grained Presidio is a varietal newly developed by the USDA-ARS that matures early in Southern growing systems and has good disease-resistance; another long-grained new cultivar, Neches, is touted as waxy and sweet-flavored; there’s also earthy, medium-grain Sahbhagi; and Sierra, a long-grained aromatic rice akin to basmati. On the West Coast, California’s oldest family-owned rice farm and mill, Koda Farms, is a third-generation enterprise producing heirloom Kokuho rose—a medium-grain Japanese-style varietal developed on behalf of the Koda family in the 1950s.

There’s been a lot of hoopla around Napa-based Rancho Gordo and its extensive selection of heirloom beans—starchy Ayocote blanco, purple-hued Lila, Rebosero from Hidalgo. Some of these are raised by Indigenous Mexican farmers, and each comes with its own staunch fan base—plus a selection of recipes, should you run out of self-generated inspiration. You could also tap New York international grocery emporium Kaustyan’s—whether perused in person or via online scroll, the selection is dizzying. Select from one- or two-pound bags of mild, versatile tongue of fire; buttery Val; potato-y tiger eye; nutty Swedish brown; tiny green Indian staple moth, equally tiny Asian specialty adzuki, and the list goes on and on, supporting recipes for dishes like rajma, osekihan, Ghanaian waakye, Brazilian feijoada, and so much more.

For those seeking a shortcut to bean-y goodness, Lebanese specialty product maker Al Wadi offers tasty cans of premade foul moudammas, seasoned fava beans that are the Middle East’s quintessential breakfast food. Al Wadi also gives your dinner prep a head start with jars and cans of cooked kidney beans, chickpeas, white beans, and limas— available in supermarkets across the country as well as online from Brooklyn importer Sahadi’s.

A Dozen Cousins, founded by Brooklyn native Ibraheem Basir, partly with a mission to fund programs that aim to rectify socioeconomic health disparities in the US, has offerings that give you a jump on lunch, dinner, and snack assembly. Its just-the-right-level-of-soft and deliciously seasoned pouches of slightly tangy Cuban black beans/frijoles negros and tomato-spicy Mexican cowboy pinto beans/frijoles churros will get you part of the way to a burrito. (This is a particularly effortless enterprise if you also tap Lotus Foods’ Heat & Eat bowls of nutty, chewy forbidden rice or brown jasmine. Like the traditional bags of rice offered by the company, these precooked shortcuts are grown in low-water, high-yield systems by small farmers in China and Cambodia.)

Burned out on species from the Oryza genus? Give wild rice—also a grass, but hailing from the genus Zizania—a try. An important ancestral crop for many Indigenous North Americans, it’s grown in lakes and streams across Minnesota—including at Spirit Lake Native Farms, which is owned and operated by the half Chippewa, half Paiute Savage family. Known as manoomin to the Ojibwe and other tribes, it’s not traditionally served with beans but rather, fish, pine nuts, mushrooms, cranberries. (But you have our permission to serve and enjoy it however you like.)