This recipe here is super quick and easy to cook. Perfect for a lazy day, when you’re not in the vein to do much prep for your mid-day meal or dinner. Pasta is that one ingredient that always saves you from all the employment you would have to go through otherwise. In addition to this, when you’re looking for a tasty flavor and maybe think making the sauce will consume more time, I feel baked beans are a perfect alternative for that.
Ingredients
- 400g can baked beans
- 200g fusilli pasta
- 1-2 medium onions, sliced
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 70g cheddar cheese, grated (approx 1 tbsp kept for garnish)
- 1 tsp Marmite
- 1 tsp tomato puree
- Vegetable oil (or butter)
- Pasta water, reserved
- Handful parsley1, minced (optional)
- Black pepper
- Salt (to taste)
Baked Beans
Baked beans are delicious, but what exactly are they, and how are they made?
They’re actually very simple: they’re composed of haricot beans, tomato sauce and a mixture of spices.
The haricot beans are imported dry, rehydrated, assorted with tomato sauce and spices, and then everything is steamed collectedly inside the tin.
That means you don’t need to cook baked beans before eating them; they’re prepared to eat straight from the can.
Haricot beans contains great amount of protein, and together with the tomato sauce, baked beans provide 2 of your 5-a-day. Also, because the whole thing is cooked directly in the can, all of the nutrients from the beans are conserved — nothing is castoff.
They’ll be great food to have stocked up when global warming ends the earth and we’re all living in underground bunkers.
To cook this dish in its modest form, we’ll heat up the beans and mix them through with the cooked pasta, cheese and some of the pasta water, as well as any other add-ons.
Pasta
Any pasta would work fine for this dish, but I feel that a short pasta works finest.
I’d recommend something like fusilli or penne. Avoid linguine, spaghetti or other longer pasta shapes.
To cook this dish, cook the pasta in deeply salted water for 2 minutes less than the packet suggests. Strain the pasta, but save some of the pasta water which will help in future. The starchy pasta water will benefit creating a thicker and richer sauce. Then Baked Beans In Pasta will turn out great.
Cheese
You could throw any cheese into this mix, and it’s going to taste virtuous — there’s no doubt about it.
But for baked bean pasta, I’d recommend a soft, melty cheese such as cheddar, gruyere or Havarti.
Harder cheese, like parmesan, wouldn’t melt and softer cheeses, such as feta or mozzarella wouldn’t give the right reliability.
What Beans To Use In Bean Pasta Bake
I elected soya beans but any white bean variability would work in this vegetarian pasta bake.
Soya beans are nutty and sweet and delicious and so good for your health too. They are not frequently available in cans so in this recipe I used dry soya beans.
Basically soak the soya beans overnight and then cook them according to package directions. Once cooled they can be kept in the fridge (for up to 3 days) until you are prepared to use them.
What I really love about soya beans, apart from their lovely nutty flavour, is their quality. They recall a bit of crunch even after cooking so they won’t disintegrate and become mushy. They complement the soft texture of pasta really well.
Having said that it’s absolutely fine to use a canned bean variation of your choice.
Equipments Needed
- Kitchen scale/measuring cup
- Chopping board and knife
- 2 pots, large spoon and grater
- Hand blender
- Medium size casserole dish
Instructions
- Add approx. 1 tbsp vegetable oil (or butter) and the diced onions to a frying pan over medium-low heat with a pinch of salt. Cook for 10 minutes until the onions are sweated and lightly caramelized.
- In the meantime, cook the pasta as per the packet instructions in a pan of boiling, seasoned water. Use just enough water to immerse the pasta. This will leave us with more starchy water, which we can use in making sauce.
- After approx. 10 minutes, add the garlic, tomato puree and Marmite to the onions and cook for 1-2 minute.
- Then add the baked beans and approx. 1 tbsp of pasta water to the pan and mix. Add approx. 50g of the cheddar cheese.
- Turn the heat up to medium-high and cook the sauce for approx. 1-3 minutes until it condenses.
- Drain the pasta and blend it through the sauce. Taste and adjust seasoning as needed.
Thoughts On Baked Beans In Pasta
10-minutes baked bean pasta sauce for eventful families. Make this pasta sauce for your weeknight evening meal and it will be a triumph!
By the way, I don’t know about my fellow food bloggers but I try to get myself systematized by having full stomach before capturing a new dish. Yet, I usually end up dribbling no matter how full I am. Then I find it pretty hard to focus on the photos with all those amazing fragrances around me. Sometimes I am weak and unassumingly eat the dish before I take photos.
Has this ever happened to any of you? If not, then you must be pretty self-controlled human and I truly appreciate you! Or maybe you are just not hungry or immune to fragrances of your dishes. Which of those it is true?
Anyways, back to the Baked Beans In Pasta. So, it’s a very great dish acting as great source of protein like my other dishes that I upload. They all are full of protein and are healthy to eat. Making these kind of dishes keeps your health in order and this maintains a good diet for you and your family.
Conclusion
Baked Beans are often the punchline for jokes circling around British cuisine (or the absence thereof).
But this culinary British pantry staple is not only cheap but also astonishingly healthy (more on that later).
While baked beans on toast is a go-to for many Brits, there are more thought-provoking ways to use baked beans.
One example is my budget-friendly cheesy baked bean pasta.
It’s a simple yet delightful dish made up of baked beans, pasta, and cheese. It is comparatively healthy, and it can be prepared in less than 20 minutes.
Although simple, it’s also exceedingly customizable. You can add a bunch of ingredients to boost the taste of sauce, as well as bulk out the recipe with additional vegetables and other add-ons and garnishing.
