Beans Are Having A Moment

A recipe for the Bean Boom

Until last year there were only 3 types of people who were excited about jarred beans. Chefs who worked in restaurants in Hackney with a chalkboard menu, parents from Islington, and the Spanish. I’m one of the 3 but I’ll leave you to guess which. If you’ve scrolled through Instagram in the past 6 months, you have no doubt noticed the onslaught of beans. From the obvious (pimped-up beans on toast!) to the insane (beans as pasta!) they are in full force. This is by no means a criticism, merely an observation. I love beans.

Jarred beans are an entirely different entity from the canned kind. On paper they might appear similar, the contents of the respective packages near enough identical. But taste them and it’s like seeing Jedward side by side after one developed a penchant for goth core and the other moved to LA to workout incessantly and sell protein powder. Neither too soft nor too firm, creamy, well seasoned and not remotely chalky, if you haven’t tried them then please do get a jar. If you have, you know what I’m talking about.

As usual, when a new ingredient enters the cultural zeitgeist and becomes trendy, the easiest way to separate the wheat from the chaff is to look to the food cultures who have already cooked with it long before it became cool and will continue to long after it passes by. I’ve already mentioned Spain, but most of the Mediterranean Basin also has a strong tradition of growing and cooking many varieties of beans. In the Southern United States, Central and South America, beans are an integral part of the cuisine. In fact, they’re an important staple of plenty of cuisines around the world. From black-eyed peas and mung beans in India to sweet red adzuki bean desserts in China and rice and peas (kidney beans) in much of the Caribbean. 

If I was to going to rank my bean preservation preferences in descending order purely by the quality of the bean at the moment of eating (and I am going to because this is my newsletter) it would be thus: Dried > Jarred > Canned. Dried beans (soaked overnight and cooked with aromatics) are second to none, but they require the kind of foresight that rarely occurs to me. Jarred beans are quite a close second in terms of quality, and leagues ahead on the convenience scale. Pop the lid and go. Then the gulf between jarred beans and canned is pretty wide - if you’ve never tried them, it’s quite hard to impress how much better they are. They facilitate speedy versions of things like pasta e fagioli, which is not worth making with canned beans. Whilst we’re here, let’s make one thing very clear. Beans are not pasta. A lot of new-wave bean recipes (I gagged writing that) take a classic pasta dish and replace the pasta with beans as the serving vehicle for the sauce. I cannot condone this behaviour. Beans are good with pasta. Beans are good in a salad that you might eat alongside pasta. But replacing pasta with beans feels sad and wrong. 

Now, whilst beans in all their glorious forms are a truly global food, I’m bringing the conversation back to Spain because as far as I can tell, this is the home of the practice of bean jarring. A quick Google of ‘jarred beans’ shows a Spanish monopoly on the product. Pretty much every option available to buy here in the UK comes from Spain. Chef José Andrés is on board with the jarred bean superiority theory (“The Best Canned Beans Are Actually Jarred Beans”) and his favourite brand is also, unsurprisingly, Spanish.

The three big players here are:

• Navaricco, the OG, the reason that dish of lamb chops/sea bass/roast delica pumpkin on a bed of white beans at your favourite small plates joint is so good.

• Perello, the same people who make the trendy olives that I just cannot understand the fuss over. IMO their beans are much more exciting. A bit cheaper than the other two and perhaps marginally less good but not by much. I use them a lot.

• Bold Bean Co. The new kids on the block and arguably the reason for the sudden bean boom. Bold are doing great work at getting people into beans and championing them as a sustainable source of delicious protein. As good as Navaricco, fractionally more expensive but as near as makes no difference.

The recipe below aims to lean into the convenience of jarred beans and also to let them shine. Try one of the brands above when you make it.

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Brothy Beans with Fresh Tomato, Feta and Dill

Ingredients (serves 2)

1. 1 Clove of Garlic

2. 1 Stick of Rosemary

3. 1 Jar of Beans

4. 3 Large Fresh Tomatoes (in Winter look for varieties like Iberico which are in season now)

5. Handful of Dill (use parsley if you don’t like dill)

6. 1 Tbsp Sherry Vinegar (wine vinegar is fine too)

7. A block of Feta

8. Salt, pepper, olive oil

9. Crusty Bread (to serve)

Method

Place a saucepan over a low heat and add 2 tbsp of olive oil.

Press the flat side of your knife against the clove of garlic and push with your palm to crush a little. Peel and add to the oil (it should be slightly crushed open but not completely smashed apart).

Once the garlic has sizzled gently for a minute or so and turned lightly golden on both sides, add your stick of rosemary and pour in your beans + the liquid from the jar. It should look roughly like the picture below, add a splash of water if they don’t have enough liquid.

Leaving the beans to bubble very gently on a low heat, use a box grater to grate your tomatoes into a bowl. Transfer the tomatoes and their juices to the beans along with the dill, a good glug of olive oil and a big pinch of salt and simmer for another couple of minutes. You want the resulting texture to be saucy. Not soupy and not dry but somewhere in the middle.

Now turn off the heat, add the sherry vinegar, stir and taste. Depending on how salty your chosen brand of bean is you might need a pinch more. Feel free to add another drop of vinegar too, if you like. At this point you should have a warm, salty, saucy, zingy mass of beans and tomato.

Spoon into bowls, top with a few chunks of feta, more dill, plenty of black pepper and another drizzle of olive oil. Eat with lots of hot crusty bread.