your next meal: a can of beans
hear me out, i promise this is going somewhere good
The canned bean might be the single greatest product to result from modern food processing. No, it’s not as addictive as a box of goldfish nor as iconic as sliced bread. But unlike so much processed food, it’s also not contributing to the unstoppable decline in our collective physical health.
Canned beans are delicious, healthy, varied, and versatile. They invariably form the base of the fastest and most comforting meals I can cook for myself. They can be found in any grocery store in many varieties. They will probably never cost you more than $2, and that’s expensive.
Beans, broadly speaking, are an underhyped miracle food. Acai berries and chia seeds have nothing on these legumes when it comes to the antioxidants and soluble fiber content that gets the former thrown in the yogurt bowls and smoothies of every TikTok girlie with an eating disorder. The protein in beans substitutes for meat in places where meat is an unaffordable luxury; for reference, 100 grams of beans and 100 grams of tofu carry about the same amount of protein. Unlike tofu, that same amount of beans also provides substantive vitamins, fiber, and carbohydrates, making it nutritionally dense.
Our food system, which is wreaking havoc on the climate and contributes to about 30% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, needs to be more reliant on nutrient-dense foods, especially as our population continues to balloon. High-calorie, high-protein plants use the least amount of resources for the highest amount of nutritional benefit. Beans, for example, require only 204 liters of water to produce 100 grams of protein, compared to 381 for chicken, 728 for beef, and nearly 1,700 for farmed fish, according to calculations from Our World in Data. (I recommend trolling around on their website if you’re feeling nerdy, and if you’re interested in serious, data-based reflections on our planet’s future check out
’s , which is one of my favorite Substacks.) Beans also require less fertilizer because they can nitrogen-fix, a process where they essentially make fertilizer for themselves. Not only does this reduce the devastating effects of nitrogen pollution (which I’ve written about in detail here), it improves the health of the soil for future crops planted in the same place. (Basically everything I’ve written so far also applies to lentils, peas, and other legumes.)If you’re interested in more along these lines, I wrote last year about how mussels also provide an unusually high level of protein and nutrients for their climate impact.
But this isn’t a newsletter solely focused on healthy and environmentally-conscious foods, as much as those are wonderful things. Here at Bite into this, we consider the experience of consuming, of purchasing and cooking and eating. This is a newsletter about good food — and it turns out that beans are pretty great.
During the peak years of the pandemic, dried beans temporarily claimed a place in the zeitgeist. Heirloom-bean purveyor Rancho Gordo became one of those cult brands with a long waitlist.
wrote so many newsletters on beans that I think even she grew sick of them. Sitting at home, whiling away the hours, we collectively learned to watch a gently burbling pot of pink or gold streaked legumes soften, swell, and split into a steaming starchy stew.I still love the ritual of cooking a pot of beans this way, but let’s be real: for most people most of the time, it’s pretty fussy. You have to plan ahead, you have to be sure your beans aren’t too old, and you have to patiently wait for them to cook on their own unpredictable time. A dried bean is for a slow Sunday project, for a day of wandering around and doing little chores and roasting a chicken; a canned bean is for every other day, for hunger, for rain, for a luxurious lunch alone or a quick weeknight dinner, for feeling sick or sad.
Most bean recipes discuss the canned version with a bit of disdain. “If you must”, “when I’m lazy,” etc. tend to preface the modification options for how you could opt for canned beans in a moment of desperation. I really don’t get this. Every can of cooked beans I’ve had, from grocery brands to Goya, from black to pinto to Great Northern and garbanzo, pretty much slaps. They’re cooked through but still very firm, salted or unsalted depending on your preference, and easily adapted. They don’t come with a feeling of self-actualization, but I’ll take what I can get.
Some ways to cook your cans of beans
If you’ve only ever eaten a can of beans by dumping some cold chickpeas on a salad, you should start by thinking of beans like pasta — a blank canvas. Their flavor and texture will benefit greatly from the tiniest bit of extra cooking, and they can remain almost exactly as they were in the can or become the basis of a much more elaborate meal, depending on your vibes.
A basic template: To cook any kind of canned bean, throw some seasonings in a pan with olive oil and saute gently for a minute or so. Add as many cans of drained and rinsed beans as you’d like, and fill with water until the beans are almost covered but not quite. Add a couple of pinches of salt, unless your beans are already salted and taste very salty coming out of the can. Bring to a boil, and then reduce to a gentle bubble until the beans are creamier and the water has reduced and become starchy, stirring occasionally. This will probably take about 10 minutes, but you can cook more or less depending on if you’re looking for a firmer or mushier bean. Take off the heat and top with whatever you like.
On the simpler end, I often make a can or two of black beans with a few vigorous shakes each of paprika and cayenne and chili powder. I’ll then eat that with a grating of cheese and some salsa, or topped with a fried egg, or folded into a burrito. If I have garlic or jalapeno, I’ll mince some up and briefly saute with olive oil in the bottom of the pot before adding the beans and spices. Cilantro, sour cream, and queso would all make nice toppings, as would corn and avocado.
I’ll do something similar with white beans, sometimes a combination of cannellini and Great Northern, sometimes just whichever one I have on hand. For these beans, I slice up some garlic into thin rounds and saute with some olive oil and a dash of red pepper flakes. Sometimes I’ll add a few chopped anchovies, or diced shallot, or a little bit of bacon or pancetta. If I have lemon, I might do a cute little grating of lemon zest into the mix.
Once you’ve added the beans to the pan and cooked them to your liking, you could pull it off the heat and just eat with a squeeze of lemon juice and a shower of grated parmesan cheese.
If you’re looking for a richer meal, these white beans especially make a great canvas for some shrimp, a few handfuls of spinach or kale, chopped broccolini, or other green vegetable. You throw them into the pot a few minutes before the beans are done, stirring occasionally until whatever you’ve added has cooked to your liking, usually just a minute for spinach or about three minutes for shrimp. This is basically the template for any of the white bean stews that proliferate on Bon Appetit and NYT Cooking and the like, so if you really need a recipe to get you started, any of those will work to give you a sense of what to do for the first time.
The possibilities proliferate from here — a combination of canned black and kidney beans makes a phenomenal base for a vegetarian chili (detailed recipe to be found in a forthcoming Bite into this). A can of chickpeas and a can of tomatoes will get you 75% of the way to a classic Italian ceci pasta. A can of pinto beans could be cooked with garlic and jalapenos like the black beans above, then transferred to a skillet and mashed up with a spatula at a really high heat to make something refried-bean-esque.
If you’ve got questions about things to do with beans, you can always reply to this email or ask in the comments.
Until next time, here’s some fresh pasta coming soon to a newsletter near you…
