Butter beans baked with pancetta and a delicious crispy topping. Butter beans are the best value when soaked and cooked from dried.
Cook them from dried
Butter bean recipes usually feature a jar or a tin of ready-cooked ones. But it’s much, much cheaper to use dried beans, soak them and boil them.
Admittedly, they won’t come out as perfectly smooth and evenly tender as the jarred beans from a posh brand. But the Greeks, who know a thing or two about butter beans that they call giant beans (gigantes), always cook them from scratch. If the Greeks can, why can’t we?
How to prepare dried butter beans
Better value, as I already said, and soaking overnight doesn’t require any effort whatsoever, except remembering to do it last thing at night.
The following day refresh the water, and personally I never salt it. I’ve tried it and found it took longer for the beans to cook. But if you normally add salt and are happy with the result, go for it.
It takes about an hour of simmering for the beans to soften. Drain them, reserving the cooking liquid in case of this recipe.
Tip: cook twice as much as you need for a recipe and transfer half into a jar with some cooking liquid. They will keep for a week in the fridge. You can also drain and portion them into freezer bags. Frozen, they will keep as long as three to six months.
Pancetta or bacon?
I prefer to use pancetta in this recipe and the leaner it is, the better. But you can swap it for streaky, smoked bacon if you prefer. After you’ve cooked it crisp, check how salty it is. Since bacon tends to be saltier than pancetta, seasoning your dish will need to be adjusted accordingly.
Sofritto
This recipe includes sofritto, the sauce base known in France as mirepoix. Usually it’s a mix of finely diced onion, carrot and celery which is sweated in oil or butter at the start of the sauce or casserole cooking. Those ingredients are aromatics and they provide the flavour base to the dish.
Tip 1: instead of laboriously dicing, process all the sofritto ingredients in a food processor or mini blender, until finely chopped but not pulverised.
Tip 2: buying a whole head of celery in order to use half a rib, and the rest to languish in the fridge for ever, is totally pointless. Swap celery for a piece of broccoli stem, which otherwise usually gets chucked out.
Thus prepared sofritto will be softened in olive oil, with the other aromatics, spices and herbs added to the pan gradually.
Baking butter beans with pancetta
Once the base is finished, you can return the beans and pancetta to the pan. If you’re having to use a separate pan on the hob, transfer the beans and pancetta to an oven dish first and then scrape in the sauce base from the frying pan.
Add enough cooking liquid to come halfway up the contents. In case you forgot to reserve the bean liquor and drained it all into the sink, no worries: use low-salt chicken or vegetable stock or just water.
If your oven dish doesn’t have a lid, cover it tightly with a double layer of foil and bake for an hour and a quarter, or until the beans are very soft.
The topping
Don’t skip the topping! That’s the best bit.
It’s made very simply by mixing grated cheese, breadcrumbs and a tablespoon of butter with a fork, until crumbly.
When the beans are baked, crumble the topping over the surface and return to the oven for fifteen minutes or so, until the topping is golden and crusty.
These beans are delicious served with a dollop of Greek yoghurt, with bread, green salad or both on the side. And if there are any leftovers, they make fabulous beans on toast!
More butter bean recipes
Tomato and spinach butter beans, a delicious vegetarian casserole and a satisfying nutritional powerhouse. Plus a supremely frugal budget recipe especially when using dry beans soaked and cooked from scratch.
Butter beans with ham hock, a slow cooked stew of incredible flavours and richness, the ultimate comfort dish. Butter beans need soaking overnight, but what’s difficult about that?
Butter beans and chorizo dish with crispy Parmesan topping, a little heat from a chilli and saltiness from anchovy. Beans and sausage, but not as you know it!
More high fibre recipes
Brown butter lentil and sweet potato salad is a delicious combo of roasted sweet potato chunks, green or puy lentils cooked from scratch and a super flavoursome dressing made with sage leaves and brown butter. With crumbled blue or goats cheese on top, optionally.
Tomato and chickpea tray bake with chunks of feta roasting upon the vegetables, spiced and sweet with honey and chilli dressing. An easy vegetarian meal.
Five-spice butternut squash in cheesy custard, with orange rayu (Japanese chilli oil) is precisely the treatment the squash needs to be a great dish. No surprise, it’s a recipe from Ottolenghi.