For The Best Lima Beans, Make Them Like Cracker Barrel With 2 Ingredients In Your Fridge

Southerners can be fairly particular about their food. Whether it's fried chicken, classic Southern shrimp and grits, chicken and dumplings, or barbecued meat, many residents of the South have strong opinions about their favorite dishes and how those dishes should be cooked. It's not just the mains, either. Sides are a big deal. Even if you make the perfect fried chicken, you also need to pay attention to your mashed potatoes and gravy.

Southern-focused restaurant chains, including Cracker Barrel, get this. That's why it's been making side items its customers love for a while now. Among those sides, some seem to come and go — including Cracker Barrel's broccoli and cheese casserole, as well as its famous lima beans. These delicious beans are cooked low and slow with two other basic ingredients: bacon and onions. What's not to love about that?

Fans of the lima beans sure do love them. The problem is, unfortunately, these lima beans aren't a permanent menu item. These fans can only hope that Cracker Barrel will bring these back around sometime soon. In the meantime, this is quite the easy side to make at home. As we mentioned, this lima beans dish consists mainly of two other ingredients: slow-simmered bacon and onions. You also need some chicken stock for simmering and other seasonings, such as garlic, salt, pepper, a touch of sugar, and some optional red pepper flakes. The whole cooking process should take around an hour so as to let everything get soft and buttery, just like Cracker Barrel does it.

Though this fan-favorite side was once a menu mainstay, Cracker Barrel discontinued its lima beans in favor of bringing them back occasionally during certain times of the year. During its brief return to the Cracker Barrel menu, many fans were elated. "They need to just keep them on the menu, but I'll take whatever I can get for now," one customer said on Facebook, "We have missed these!" One Instagram user was also very excited: "LIMA BEANS ARE BACK ON THE MENU AT CRACKER BARREL!!!! No, this is not a joke!!!!! My whole month has been made!!!! Y'all need to be excited with me!!!!!"

Sadly, the lima beans disappeared as quickly as they appeared on the Cracker Barrel menu, and lima beans aren't the only item that Cracker Barrel has discontinued to the disappointment of some customers. That's just part of the restaurant economy these days. The good news is that these lima beans are easy enough to make at home. Let that tide you over until they appear once again on the Cracker Barrel menu.