Easy Homemade Tomato Beans on Toast

This is my homemade version of baked beans. I’m not sure if it is very authentic because there is no baking involved. I have always gotten a little grossed out by baked beans on toast, only because the only version I was exposed to was the canned version. Something about the beans in the sauce just made them look so slimy and unappealing. Since baked beans were not really a thing in my culture growing up, I had never actually tasted them before. It wasn’t until I watched a random youtube video with homemade baked beans that I started to come around to the idea. Watching that video made me realise that since the sauce was tomato-based, I would probably really love it. Tomato-based sauces are always a win for me and my toddler. It’s pretty hard not to like them. Anything in a tomato sauce has been on my “safe list” of foods for a long time so I became determined to try baked beans and make them in a way that I know I would love. After extended breastfeeding left me a little depleted in iron, I realised adding more beans and legumes into my diet was a really good way to get my iron levels back up. I am pretty good with all other sources of plant-based iron but have also minimised the number of beans I eat because I used to struggle to digest them when I first went plant-based. My digestion no longer struggles in this area so I have been making an effort to add a wider variety of beans into my diet for the extra iron (and loads of other benefits too, including building healthy neurotransmitters ). As soon as I started adding more legumes and beans into my diet, most of my low iron symptoms improved, most noticeably my post menstrual low iron headaches.

Homemade baked beans are incredibly warm and comforting and taste absolutely delicious. They were an instant hit with my toddler too and we now have them regularly, sometimes on wholemeal or rye sourdough toast, and sometimes on polenta? I’m not sure if that’s weird but we love it with a big side of fried mushrooms and cabbage salad. I am still yet to try canned baked beans so I am not sure how traditional my recipe is going to taste. I’m also not sure what type of beans are typically used for baked beans. I tend to go for the ones that are similar in shape but rely mostly on what is readily available to me. I usually use either borlotti beans or cannellini beans. Of course, the gold standard for eating beans would be to cook your own, but let’s face it, that takes too long, and if I were to say to you to cook your own beans than I don’t think I could call this recipe easy anymore. I know some cultures regularity boil their own beans from scratch and find it super easy. This is definitely not me, and I don’t see it becoming me anytime soon… because… I am a mum! I may consider cooking up big batches of beans in a pressure cooker and freezing them but as it stands my freezer is always so full I simply don’t know where I would fit them. But by all means, use the type of beans that work best for you.

This recipe is vegan, plant-based, refined sugar-free, and dairy-free.

For a full list of the equipment I used in my cooking, pleas view this post: https://hazelandcacao.com/cooking-equipment-i-use/

For a list of the common ingredients I used in my cooking, please visit this link: https://hazelandcacao.com/commonly-used-ingredients/