Making Australian Black Bean Edible

Primitive Technology: Removes the poison from “Castanospermum australe” black beans.

Cooking and leaching Black bean to remove the poison making it safe to eat. A basket was made to leach the poison out in a stream. Thus making Australian black bean edible.

Also shown are Atherton Oak nuts. The Aboriginal artefacts found near by were probably made by the Yidinji people.

It seems like a lot of effort to prepare black bean to eat, but consider the effort that goes into making bread from scratch (plowing, sowing, winnowing, storing, milling, baking etc.).

With Black bean it is collected when needed, storage is unnecessary as nothing eats it raw and it can be left in the stream till needed. It contains more energy than potatoes (but less than grain) and contains lots of starch and protein. This was a staple food of the rain forest people once.

A little about black beans

Castanospermum australe (Moreton Bay Chestnut or Blackbean), the only species in the genus Castanospermum, is a flowering plant in the family Fabaceae, native to the east coast of Australia in Queensland and New South Wales, and to the Pacific islands of Vanuatu and New Caledonia.

Growth

It is a large evergreen tree growing to 40 metres (130 ft) tall, though commonly much smaller. The leaves are 15 centimetres (5.9 in) long and 6–7 centimetres (2.4–2.8 in) broad, pinnate, with 11-15 leaflets. The flowers are bicoloured red and yellow, 3–4 centimetres (1.2–1.6 in) long, produced inracemes 6 centimetres (2.4 in) long. The fruit is a cylindrical pod 12–20 centimetres (4.7–7.9 in) long and 4–6 centimetres (1.6–2.4 in) diameter, the interior divided by a spongy substance into one to five cells, each of which contains a large chestnut-like seed.

Uses

The seeds are poisonous, but become edible when carefully prepared by roasting, cutting up into small pieces, leaching with running water for several days, and pounding into flour. The timber, which somewhat resembles walnut, is soft, fine-grained, and takes a good polish, but is not durable.