home-made vegetarian baked beans

What’s On Your Plate?

Out of the blue, Dad asked if I knew how to make the baked beans served at Hard Rock Cafe. As a regular of Heinz baked beans, I didn’t. But as one can find just about anything on the internet these days, I said I would look.

Lo and behold! of course there is a copycat recipe, which I have tweaked to our taste: biggest changes is that I took out the bacon, and upped the amount of chilli powder, and I used a variety of beans which I cook from dry.

some of my bean collection (from left: navy, kidney, black-eyed peas, pinto, garbanzo)

• 850g cooked beans: I like to use mixed beans for varied taste & texture
• 1/2 the aquafaba/bean juice from the cans or from your cooking
• 2 tsp cornstarch
• 2 Tbsp water
• 100g tomato ketchup (I use Heinz)
• 1/3 cup vinegar (I use regular white vinegar)
• 50g brown sugar
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 1 tsp mustard powder
• 1/2-1 tsp chilli powder (depending on who I am making this for, I sometimes go up to 1 1/2 tsp)

1. Preheat oven to 180 deg C.
2. Mix everything in a baking tray and bake for 90 min.
3. Stir every 30 min.
4. Add in more aquafaba when the liquid starts to dry up. I usually use all the aquafaba from my cooking. If you are using cans, you might add some additional water if the beans get too dry.

The baked beans keep well in the fridge for about a week (we’re not sure what happens after that because we never have any left past that time), and we pile it onto all sorts of sandwiches, top with avo & cheese, or just eat them just as they are. It’s hard to imagine eating only canned baked beans now, although I do return to them when I run out of our self-made ones.

This post is my contribution to What’s On Your Plate Challenge hosted by Deb at The Widow Badass & Donna at Retirement Reflections.