Anasazi Bean

The Anasazi bean is a dappled red and white variety of the common bean first cultivated by the Ancestral Puebloan people around the year 130 AD in the Four Corners region of what is now the southwestern United States. Its splashed red and white pattern distinguishes it from similarly marked varieties such as the Jacob's Cattle bean, which carries both splashes and small spots rather than splashes alone. Long grown by Spanish-speaking communities under names such as frijol conejo, vaquita and pajaro carpintero, the bean was adopted by commercial growers beginning in the 1980s and marketed under the Anasazi name, and today is cooked dried or used fresh as a shell bean.