These beans come from Seth and Jeanette Johnson of Morningstar Farm in Glover VT. They and their family grow an impressive array of organic beans, grains, sunflowers for oil, and hay in the beautiful Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.
 
Cayenne beans are a new bean offering as of 2019 that was bred at Michigan State University, like a good many newer bean varieties. It benefits growers by being higher-yielding, upright, shorter-season than other red bean varieties, and demonstrating resistant to common bean diseases. Cayenne is special through a culinary lens because it is among the reddest red beans and retains that color better than others when cooked and retains a clear brine, making it a nice option for soups where you don’t want the beans to dominate.
 
Here is a recipe for one such soup I made subbing the Cayenne for white beans and combining them with the first sweet potatoes of the season up here. It’s an Instant Pot recipe, but it works just as well in a slow cooker or in a long simmer on the stove in any old pot with a lid.
 
I also like taking these beans (honestly, any beans, really) and crushing them with a fork over some wellbuttered toast with a squeeze of fresh lemon and pinch of salt in the morning for an avocado toast on a budget.