Can someone give me info on mayocoba beans?

Answer 1

Mayocoba beans, a.k.a. Frijoles Peruanos are a variety of common beans very similar to pintos that are unspeckled, buff-yellowish, a bit less bitter, IMO sweeter and in my experience a hair larger than pintos. They are slightly preferred in many areas of Mexico now to the staple Pinto Beans (Frijoles pintos) and have very minimal nutritional difference.

Mayocobas are simply a variety obtained by breeding selections of the Mexican beans (mostly pinto) possibly with some cross breeding of material that had arrived from Peru. The Peru connection is because the yellow color of beans first appeared on the Peruvian coast with agriculturalists there breeding beans and they got the reputation for the Peruvian yellow beans, and thus newly developed Mexican yellow varieties in the early 1980's were nicknamed "peruanos" and one early variety was called "Azufrado Peruano" along with "Mayocoba", which is just a place name in Sinaloa, Mexico that has nothing in particular to do with the parent plant, the ubiquitious common bean.

The name Mayocoba for that particular variety was possibly chosen because that is where those particular yellow beans were bred (and they are one of probably 100 different yellow varieties with minimal difference from a nutritional point of view, though may distinguish themselves as crops, yields, temperature, cycle time, disease resistance, etc.), or maybe for any other reason including the breeders' pride of that community or just a commercial marketing name for Mesoamerican proximity though thay might as well have been called army beans since the name navy was taken. In any case there was no such thing as Mayocoba beans before 1981, it is just a modern minted common bean and named variety similar to thousands of other frijoles varieties.

Mayocoba today is easily possible to be Azufrado Peruano as names tend to get mixed up when bean characteristics are nearly identical. It is very possible that the Mexican breeders had some of the Peruvian material, and it is equally plausible they got it independently. That would require DNA fingerprinting of the varieties to certify it as a true Mexican bean or Mexican crossed with a Peruvian originally bred in Mexico.

Peruanos/Mayocobas are selectively bred and have the benefits of being slightly more creamy and not disintegrating when soaked and cooked as easily as pintos - characteristics obtained by agriculturalists by cross breeding as has been done for centuries, not GMO which involves direct genetic manipulation and is frowned upon in some circles).

Nutritionally these yellow beans are pretty similar to all of the common bean varieties (Mayocoba, Azufrados peruanos, pintos, reds, blacks, etc.) which all are just selectively bred from the common bean plant, Phaeseolus vulgaris, which has been cultivated and bred for millennia in Peru and Mesoamerica.

The only notable nutritional difference is that the darker the bean the more antioxidants it generally has but this is not a big deal when looking at the entire nutritional profile of common beans. So Mayocobas would be expected to have the lowest value of antioxidant content except for whiter beans. Also some bean varieties are slightly more fibrous than others and Mayocoba would probably be marginally lower fiber, but the difference would be minimal.

As far as the protein profile, it is similar to pintos in that essential amino acids missing for a complete nutritional protein are MET/CYS and a few others are weak. The missing ones can be obtained by eating grains such as rice or corn. That is why rice and beans is such an celebrated combination historically for Mesoamericans, today for poor Latin Americans and for Vegans. Plus they taste great. Try some Hoppin' John if you want to see the US Southern traditional equivalent.