Fabada Asturiana.

Name: Fabada Asturiana (Asturian Bean and Chorizo Stew)
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 3 h
Total time: 15 h 20 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Spain
Ingredients: 400 g dried fabes de la Granja or other large white beans; 1 bay leaf; 1 onion, peeled and left whole; 2 cloves garlic cloves, peeled and left whole; 2 smoked cooking chorizo, preferably chorizo asturiano; 2 smoked morcilla asturiana; 200 g lacón or smoked ham hock, in one piece; 100 g tocino or unsmoked streaky pork fat, in one slab; 2 tbsp olive oil; 1 tsp sweet pimentón; 1 pinch saffron threads; to taste salt

Asturian Bean and Chorizo Stew

Fabada asturiana · say it: fah-BAH-dah ah-stoo-ree-AH-nah

Fabada is a bean stew from Asturias, the green, rainy north-west corner of Spain, and it is built on exactly two ideas: enormous, buttery white beans called fabes de la Granja, and a bundle of smoked pork known as the compango. Nothing is browned, nothing is puréed, and no flour ever goes near the pot. Over two or three hours of the gentlest possible simmer the beans release their starch, the sausages leak paprika-red fat into the liquid, and the broth thickens itself into something glossy and orange that clings to the spoon. The flavour is deeply smoky and salty, with a sweetness from the beans that stops it feeling heavy in the mouth even though it very much is. Asturians eat it at lunch, in winter, and then go and lie down.

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Asturian Bean and Chorizo Stew

Gate: SpainAsturias
Prep: 20 min
Cook: 3 hr
Total time: 15 hr 20 min incl. 12 hr rest
Serves: 4
Status: Medium
Nutrition / serving · estimated: Calories 790 kcal; Protein 42 g; Carbs 48 g; Fat 46 g; Fiber 14 g; Sodium 1500 mg

Why this recipe works.

Cold start, low simmer and the asustar trick — the discipline that keeps every bean whole instead of a pot of split skins.
Explains what compango actually is, so you can shop for the right sausages instead of guessing.
Thickens by shaking and starch alone, exactly as it is done in Asturias — no flour, no blending, no cheating.
Honest about the bean: tells you what changes if you use ordinary cannellini instead of true fabes.

Tips from our kitchen.

Soak the beans a full 12 hours in plenty of cold water, and cook them in fresh water — the soaking liquid carries the compounds that make beans harsh.
Never let it boil. A rolling boil bursts the skins and turns the broth cloudy and grey instead of glossy orange.
Shake the pot by the handles instead of stirring. One pass with a wooden spoon will break more beans than an hour of simmering.
Salt only at the very end. The chorizo, morcilla and lacón are already salty, and salting early keeps bean skins tough.
If the broth is still thin when the beans are done, crush a small ladleful of beans against the side of the pot and stir them back in.
Skim the orange fat that pools on top if you want a lighter stew, but leave some — it is where most of the paprika flavour lives.

Substitutions.

Fabes de la Granja → Large dried cannellini, judión or Greek gigantes beans: You lose the fine skin and the creamy centre that make fabada distinctive, but a large, thin-skinned white bean gets you most of the way. Avoid small navy beans — they cook to mush before the broth thickens.
Morcilla asturiana → Any smoked blood sausage, or a Polish kaszanka: Asturian morcilla is smoked and heavily seasoned with onion and paprika. Spanish morcilla de Burgos contains rice and will fall apart, so add it whole and late if it is all you can find.
Lacón (cured pork shoulder) → A smoked ham hock or a piece of unsmoked gammon: Soak salty cured cuts for a few hours first, or the finished stew will need no salt at all and still taste too salty.

Variations.

Fabes con almejas: The Asturian coast version: the same beans and technique, but no pork at all — clams are opened separately and folded in at the end with parsley and a little white wine.
Pote asturiano: A looser everyday cousin that adds potato and collard greens to the beans and compango, closer to a soup and cooked in half the time.
Fabada de vigilia: A meat-free Lenten version built on beans, onion, garlic, paprika and a good glug of olive oil, sometimes with salt cod. Thinner and cleaner, and traditional rather than modern.

Storage & reheating.

Fabada improves overnight and keeps 4 days refrigerated. The fat sets into an orange cap on top — leave it in place while it stores, then reheat the whole pot slowly over low heat, adding a splash of water because the beans keep drinking. Never reheat at a boil. It freezes well for 3 months if you freeze the beans and broth together; slice the sausages after thawing rather than before, since they crumble when frozen in pieces.

Serve with

Crusty bread, a green salad sharp with vinegar, and Asturian cider poured from a height. Rice pudding afterwards if anyone is still standing.

The story behind Fabada Asturiana.

Fabada is younger than it tastes. Asturias has grown beans and cured pork for centuries, and peasant pots of legumes with whatever fat was hanging in the rafters are old everywhere in Spain, but fabada as a named, codified dish belongs to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when it moved from farmhouse kitchens into the restaurants and casas de comidas of Oviedo and Gijón. What made it famous was the bean itself. Faba de la Granja is a specific Asturian variety — long, flat, ivory-white, with a skin so fine it almost dissolves — and it now carries a protected geographical designation. Cooks talk about it the way Italians talk about a particular tomato: the dish exists to show the bean off, and everything else in the pot is there to season it.

The compango is where regional pride gets loud. It means, roughly, the accompaniment, and in Asturias it is understood as chorizo asturiano and morcilla asturiana — both cured over a wood fire rather than air-dried like their Castilian cousins — plus a piece of lacón or shoulder ham and a slab of tocino, unsmoked back fat. That smoke is not a nice extra; it is the reason Asturian fabada tastes different from every other Spanish bean stew, including its close relatives fabes con almejas, made with clams instead of pork, and the Catalan and Castilian bean dishes that use fresh sausage. If your butcher only stocks Spanish chorizo that is dry-cured and unsmoked, the stew is still very good, but it will taste more of paprika than of woodsmoke.

The technique is famously anti-technique. Beans go into the pot cold, covered with cold water, along with the meat. The pot is brought slowly to a bare tremble and then held there, and any time it threatens to boil the cook adds a splash of cold water to "frighten" the beans — asustar las fabes — which keeps the skins from bursting. The stew is never stirred with a spoon; you take the handles and shake the pot in a circle, which releases starch and emulsifies the fat without breaking a single bean. Asturians also insist it is better the next day, and they are right.

Questions, answered.

Why did my beans split and go mushy?

Almost always because the pot boiled. Beans need a temperature where the surface barely trembles; a rolling boil tumbles them against each other and bursts the skins. The other common cause is salting early — salt firms bean skins in some conditions and toughens them in others, so add it only once the beans are already tender. Adding a splash of cold water whenever the pot starts to bubble hard is the traditional fix.

Do I really need to soak the beans overnight?

Yes, for this dish. Large dried white beans need a full 12 hours to hydrate all the way to the centre; unsoaked beans cook unevenly, with tender outsides and chalky cores, and take far longer. A quick-soak (boil 2 minutes, stand 1 hour) works in an emergency but gives you more broken skins. Discard the soaking water and start with fresh cold water.

What is compango and can I skip parts of it?

Compango is the Asturian name for the bundle of cured pork that flavours the stew: smoked chorizo, smoked morcilla, a piece of cured shoulder (lacón) and a slab of pork fat (tocino). You can drop the tocino and the stew still works. Dropping the morcilla changes it more than you would expect — it is what gives the broth its dark, faintly sweet, spiced depth. Chorizo alone makes a good bean stew, but Asturians would not call it fabada.

Can I make fabada in a pressure cooker?

You can, and many Spanish home cooks do on a weeknight: soaked beans plus compango cook in roughly 25 minutes at pressure. The trade-off is real, though. Pressure cooking agitates the beans and breaks more skins, and the broth does not develop the same glossy body because you cannot shake the pot or reduce it slowly. If you go this route, release pressure naturally and finish with 15 minutes uncovered on the stove to thicken.

Is fabada supposed to be soupy or thick?

Thick but pourable — the broth should coat a spoon and settle around the beans rather than sitting on top of them like water. It thickens from bean starch alone, so if it is thin at the end, keep simmering uncovered, or mash a ladle of beans and stir them back in. If it has gone claggy, loosen it with hot water rather than stock, which would push the salt higher.

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