Lupini Beans substitute

Best substitute

Tarwi or chochos (Andean lupini)

Use the same amount as the lupini beans you are replacing

Best for eating cold as a snack

Close match

Cooked and peeled fava beans are the closest swap at 1:1 - they have the same firm skin and dense creamy interior. Canned chickpeas, rinsed, work at 1:1 and are available everywhere, though a snack bowl becomes creamy and nutty instead of firm and snappy. If you specifically want the salty, high-protein snack, shelled edamame tossed with salt is the better answer, and jarred tarwi or chochos from a Latin American grocer is literally the same genus of bean. Lupini contribute texture, protein and brine salt rather than flavour - they are nearly neutral with a faint bitter edge - so judge substitutes on bite, not taste. Important: never eat a lupini bean that tastes bitter, and never shortcut the debittering process on dry beans.

Other lupini beans substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Cooked, peeled fava beans (broad beans)
Different taste
Use the same amount
The best swap that is not a lupin.
What changes
Peeled favas share the two things that make lupini distinctive: a firm outer bite and a dense, faintly mealy-creamy interior that holds its shape rather than collapsing. What changes: favas taste noticeably more of something - green, grassy and slightly sweet - where lupini are close to neutral with a faint bitter edge, so a bowl of them reads fresher and more vegetal. They are also rounder rather than flat, and a fraction softer. In a salad the difference barely registers; in a snack bowl eaten one at a time you will notice.
Best for
snacking with olive oil, lemon and cumin, salads and grain bowls, mezze plates, cold bean dishes
Frozen peeled favas are far easier than fresh and just as good here - boil them for three or four minutes and cool them under running water so they stay firm. Skip the double-peeling step, since the skin is part of what gives you lupini's bite. Dried favas need a long soak and cook and come out much softer.
3Canned chickpeas, well rinsed
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount
The universally available option, and completely respectable in a salad.
What changes
Chickpeas are the right sort of size and they hold together in a dressing without turning to paste. What changes: texture, mainly. Chickpeas are soft, round and creamy inside with a thin skin that slips off, so where lupini snap between the teeth chickpeas give way. They also taste nutty and distinctly of themselves rather than neutral. A cold salad works beautifully; a bowl of chickpeas set out as a nibble with drinks is a different and less interesting proposition than a bowl of termos.
Best for
salads, grain bowls and cold dishes, anything dressed with olive oil, lemon and herbs, pantry substitutions
Rinse them thoroughly and dry them well, because the starchy canning liquid dulls a dressing. For a firmer, closer bite, drain the chickpeas and roast them at high heat for fifteen minutes with a little oil and salt - that gets you toward lupini's resistance, though at the cost of the moist interior.
4Shelled edamame, cooked and salted - the snack answer
Different taste
Use the same amount
The strongest substitute if what you want lupini for is a salty, high-protein thing to eat by the handful, which is why the bean has found a second audience among low-carb and high-protein snackers.
What changes
Edamame is genuinely firm, holds a snap, takes salt well, and is comparably rich in protein and fibre. What changes: flavour and colour. Edamame is bright green and tastes sweet and grassy rather than neutral and faintly bitter, so it is unmistakably a different bean, and it needs to be eaten cold and well salted to sit in the same role. Nutritionally it is the nearest common legume on the high-protein axis.
Best for
eating by the handful as a snack, low-carb and high-protein snacking, salads, packed lunches
Boil or steam frozen shelled edamame for three minutes, drain, then cool it quickly and salt generously - underseasoned edamame tastes bland where lupini brine does the seasoning for you. Pods-on edamame is fun to eat but works less well as a lupini stand-in in a dish.
5Butter beans, gigantes or large white beans
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount
A good match for scale and appearance, and a natural choice for a mezze plate where the beans are dressed and served cold.
What changes
Gigantes in particular are big, pale and handsome. What changes: they are markedly softer and creamier than lupini, with thin skins that split easily, so they are something you eat with a fork rather than pick up whole, and they will break down if you toss them hard in a dressing. Flavour is mild and buttery rather than neutral-bitter, which most people prefer but which is not what termos tastes like.
Best for
dressed cold bean salads, mezze plates, olive oil, lemon and herb preparations
Fold the dressing in gently with a spatula. Jarred Greek gigantes are better than canned butter beans here, being firmer and already well seasoned. Cannellini beans work too but are smaller and softer still.
6Roasted salted fava beans (habas fritas) or roasted chickpeas
Taste and texture differ
Use by weight rather than volume, since these are dry and dense
The right choice when lupini were being served as a dry, salty, crunchy thing with drinks rather than as a moist bean.
What changes
Habas fritas are fried and salted broad beans sold in Spanish and Middle Eastern shops and they are hugely satisfying to eat by the handful. What changes: everything about the moisture. Lupini are wet, cool and yielding inside a firm skin; these are dry and crunch all the way through, more like a nut than a bean. As a snack they do the same job at the table. In a salad or any dish with dressing they go soft and disappointing within minutes.
Best for
salty snacks with drinks, topping salads for crunch at the last moment, shelf-stable snacking
Add them to any dressed dish at the very last second, or keep them separate and let people scatter their own. Check the salt on the packet, since many brands are salted very heavily indeed.

What is Lupini Beans?

Lupini Beans is Lupini beans, called termos across the Levant and lupini or lupins in Italy, are flat golden lupin seeds that are intensely bitter in their raw state and must be soaked and rinsed for days to be edible, after which they are sold in brine and eaten cold as a firm, salty snack.

Cooking tips

Rinse jarred or canned lupini thoroughly before eating them. They are packed in a strong brine that both preserves them and finishes the debittering, and straight from the jar they are usually far too salty. A few changes of cold water, or a ten-minute soak, brings them back into balance.
Dry lupini beans must be debittered before they are edible, and this is not a step to improvise. Raw lupin seeds contain bitter alkaloids that are genuinely unpleasant and, in quantity, harmful, and the traditional process takes days - a long soak, a boil, then repeated rinsing and soaking in fresh water, changed at least daily, until no bitterness remains. Follow a tested recipe or the National Center for Home Food Preservation for the process, do not shorten the soaking, and if a bean still tastes bitter, keep going or throw the batch out. Buying them already debittered in a jar avoids the issue entirely.
The traditional way to eat termos is to bite or pinch a small tear in the tough skin and squeeze the bean out into your mouth, discarding the skin. You can eat the skin and it is harmless, but it is chewy and slightly bitter, and the squeeze-and-discard method is why a bowl of lupini comes with an empty bowl next to it.
Dress them the way they are dressed in Beirut and Naples: good olive oil, a lot of lemon juice, salt, and either cumin or chilli flakes, sometimes with sliced onion or a scatter of parsley. Because the bean itself is close to neutral, the dressing is doing nearly all the flavour work, so be more generous than you would with a chickpea.
Keep opened lupini submerged in their own brine in the fridge and they will last a couple of weeks. Lifted out and left in a container dry, they turn leathery and their flavour goes flat within a day or two.

Frequently asked questions

Can I just leave lupini beans out?

It depends what they were there for. As a snack or a mezze item they are the whole point, so there is nothing to leave out - you either serve them or you serve something else, and salted edamame or dressed fava beans are the closest things. As one component in a mixed salad they are easy to drop, or to replace with chickpeas or butter beans, since they contribute firm texture and protein rather than flavour and nothing in the recipe depends on them.

Why do my lupini beans taste bitter?

Because they have not been fully debittered. Lupin seeds are naturally very bitter from alkaloids, and the days-long soaking-and-rinsing process exists to wash those out. If a bean tastes genuinely bitter rather than bland, it is not ready to eat - either continue the soaking with more frequent water changes, or discard the batch. This is the reason most people buy lupini already prepared in brine. A faint bitter edge in properly processed jarred beans is normal and expected; sharp, mouth-puckering bitterness is not.

Are lupini beans the same as lupin flour?

Same plant, completely different ingredient. Lupini beans are whole debittered seeds, sold in brine and eaten cold and firm. Lupin flour is milled from debittered lupin and behaves like a high-protein, low-starch flour used in baking, so it substitutes for other flours rather than for other beans. You cannot use one in place of the other in any recipe.

Are lupini beans safe if I have a peanut allergy?

Be cautious and ask a medical professional. Lupin is a recognised food allergen and is required to be declared on labels in the EU and the UK, and cross-reactivity between lupin and peanut is documented, meaning some people with a peanut allergy also react to lupin. This is not a substitution question but a medical one, so do not experiment on the basis of a recipe page. If lupin is off the table for you, fava beans, chickpeas or edamame cover the same culinary role.

What do lupini beans taste like?

Not much, which is the point. They are close to neutral with a faint nutty flavour and a slight bitter edge, and most of what you actually taste is the salty brine and whatever oil, lemon and spice they have been dressed in. The appeal is textural: a firm, taut skin that gives way to a dense, cool, faintly creamy interior. That firmness is why chickpeas, which are much softer, feel like a compromise when you eat them one at a time.

Related substitutes

More legumes substitutes

Lupini Beans substitute

Other lupini beans substitutes

2Cooked, peeled fava beans (broad beans)

3Canned chickpeas, well rinsed

4Shelled edamame, cooked and salted - the snack answer

5Butter beans, gigantes or large white beans

6Roasted salted fava beans (habas fritas) or roasted chickpeas