Push for more beans

Beans have it all, according to some of the best-known chefs in the country. They are sustainable, plentiful, nutritious and a fraction of the cost of meats such as steak and chicken.

Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall are two of the faces of a drive to double the number of black, borlotti, butter, cannellini, fava, haricot and kidney beans eaten in the UK by 2028. The Bang in Some Beans campaign is also backed by many of the UK’s main supermarkets, which have committed to increasing the sale of legumes over the next three years.

Ali Honour, a chef and the author of a new recipe book, Beans, says they are flexible enough to be used as a main course or in desserts, and offer significant savings over buying meat.

“While meat prices float into the stratosphere, humble beans remain the quiet overachievers of the food world: cheap, filling, nutritious, and ready to save your dinner and your bank account,” she says.

Jamie Oliver (left) and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall are among the well-known faces promoting beans. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

“If steak is the loud showoff at the dinner table, beans are the kid in the corner doing everyone’s homework – quietly brilliant, wildly underrated, and ultimately the one you want on your side.”

With planning, Honour says that swapping one or two meals a week will cut your food bill, as well as reduce your carbon footprint and improve your cooking. “Beans prove that great food doesn’t need to be expensive; it just needs to be thoughtful,” she says.

Rebecca Tobi, the head of food business transformation at the Food Foundation, says the rising price of meat means many households are looking at how to stretch their budget while also providing balanced meals.

“We’ve got baked beans on toast, which is a British classic. Beyond that, people often aren’t that familiar with using beans. But when you look to other cultures and countries, beans are in a huge array of really tasty dishes. From Mexico you’ve got enchiladas, ranging right through to Asian cuisine where you have dals,” she says.

“Beans are absolute powerhouses of nutrition. They contain no cholesterol. They’re naturally low in fat and they are absolutely packed full of fibre, which we don’t talk about enough in this country.”

Go half and half

The campaign encourages people to add beans to their existing recipes, so that they can reduce the amount of meat they use, and stretch their budget.

In some cases, beans can offer a similar texture to meat, Tobi says, and they can be added easily into dishes that are family favourites.

“For example, spaghetti bolognese, shepherd’s pie, chilli con carne,” she says.

Prices continue to rise for a lot of meat, so for families looking to stretch their budget, an easy way to do that but keep the familiarity and taste they like is just to swap out a proportion of the meat they would ordinarily use in a recipe, she says.

Homemade soup that includes beans. Photograph: Sergii Koval/Alamy

A simple chilli con carne for a family of four could include a 400g can of kidney or black beans alongside 400g of beef, pork or chicken.

For cautious children, the not-for-profit group Veg Power suggests you add small amounts of beans to dishes that they like and then build up the quantity over time. Soft beans such as butter, cannellini and haricot are best in creamy dishes such as mac ‘n’ cheese. Firm ones such as kidney beans, chickpeas (also known as garbanzo beans) and black beans absorb flavour and are good for chilli, curry and rice dishes and stews.

Save through switching

Figures from the Food Foundation show that a 400g can of red kidney beans (priced at 49p in Tesco) can give 36% of the recommended daily intake of protein for a woman and a quarter of the fibre. The cheapest chicken breast weighing 100g (costing 72p) gives 48% of the recommended protein intake but no fibre.

Honour says that a 150g sirloin steak (priced between £6 and £8) would provide 25g of protein, while 200g of butter beans will give 14g of protein, at a cost of about 50p.

“A pot of home-cooked beans averages 8p to 12p for each high-protein serving, cheaper than a single chicken nugget,” she says.

Red kidney beans are an ingredient that can provide a cheap alternative to meat. Photograph: GordonBellPhotography/Getty Images/iStockphoto

Bulk buy

How you buy your beans will dictate how much you spend on them. Tinned and jarred beans are pre-cooked and can be used straight away, so they are good for convenience. Dried can be very low cost as they are available in large packages, but take more preparation when you want to use them.

Jarred beans tend to be the most expensive of the three, says Tobi, and are typically more tender because of the processing that they go through.

Honour says precooked beans, in jars or cans, are convenient and consistent. Home cooks using tinned ones should go for brands without salt added when possible. Tinned is best when it comes to butter beans, chickpeas, black beans, cannellinis and red kidney beans, she says.

Dried beans, which need to be cooked, give better flavour and texture, she says, and are much better value. They multiply in weight once cooked with a rule of thumb that about 100g to 125g of them are equal to the contents of a 400g tin of beans.

To illustrate the savings of dried over tinned, she says a tin of beans will work out at about £1.50 a kilogram, while dried beans will be between 70p and 90p after cooking.

She recommends cooking one large pot every week and then freezing cooked beans in 250g portions. Freezing them in their cooking liquid will keep them plump, she says.

Tobi says they can also be frozen when part of a dish involving a sauce: “If you’ve made a stew or a dal or soup and they contain beans, they can very easily be frozen and then defrosted.”

Butter Beans are a good source of protein. Photograph: Andy StJohn/Alamy

Dried beans should be stored in airtight jars and have long shelf lives.

“Bulk-buying beans isn’t just budget-friendly, it’s inflation-proof,” Honour says, referring to the fact beans last so long.

Find recipes

Meals can work out at less than £1 a portion, Honour says. For example, “butter bean smash”, where two tins of butter beans are cooked with garlic, rosemary and thyme, is good served with crusty bread, she says. And bean burgers made with carlin peas (which are grown in the UK) are a good way to introduce people to meat alternatives.

Veg Power suggests Prue Leith’s alternative to beans on toast, which involved mixing cannellini beans with chorizo. The chef Tom Aikens has a beans with a parsley crumb recipe using flageolet beans, while the fitness trainer Joe Wicks has a curried cottage pie recipe that uses green lentils. The recipes are available on Veg Power’s website.

Honour says desserts can also use beans – for example, with black beans in brownies or chickpeas in blondies. A chocolate bean spread she created uses creamy beans such as cannellini or butter beans and does not use any of the refined sugars or palm oil that feature in some shop-bought spreads.