Edamame, literally meaning “twig bean”, is a nutritional and flavoursome green soybean that is grown mainly to harvest its young green-shelled beans. As a snack the edamame seedpods, which encase multiple beans, are lightly boiled in salted water and served whole. When eaten the beans are extracted by placing the seedpod in your mouth and using your teeth to strip the soybeans from the seedpods. The traditional setting for consumption of edamame is as a snack with beer in an izakaya.