Butter-Infused Beans in Tomato Sauce

So what's new on the front of eating more dried beans? Not this, exactly, although this sort of thing is usually done with olive oil. I took a leaf from Marcella Hazan's justly famous tomato-butter sauce for pasta, and put beans in it instead.

Since the sauce was going on beans instead of pasta I put the beans in early, and let them cook in the butter before the tomatoes went in. I think that did make the beans more buttery tasting. However, there was plenty left to thicken and flavour the tomato sauce.

How was it? It was jolly good. Pardon the Britishism, but this is like British tinned beans on toast that died and went to heaven. Actually much better, is what I'm saying, because there was no tin but lots of butter involved. (Well, the tomato sauce, maybe, and if you wanted to use tinned beans to start with, you could. Two 540-ml tins should give the right amount.)

4 servings
45 minutes, not including cooking the beans

Cook the Beans
1 cup dried white beans
1 teaspoon salt

Put the beans into a pot with plenty of water to cover them. Bring them to a boil, then cover them and turn off the heat. Let them sit for several hours, then drain them and re-cover with plenty of water. Add the salt and simmer them until tender. (These could be cooked in the instant pot - 15 to 20 minutes at high pressure after soaking, changing the water and adding salt.)

Cook the Beans in the Sauce:
3 to 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 teaspoon rubbed savory (or thyme, basil, or oregano)
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 1/2 to 2 cups not-too-thick tomato sauce

Drain the cooked beans very well. 

You will need a medium-large, shallow, non-reactive pan in which to cook this. Melt the butter in it over medium heat, measuring and adding the seasonings as it melts. Let it sizzle for 3 or 4 minutes, and if the butter turns a little brown, so much the better. But watch it and stir it, because there's brown and then there's very brown, and you don't want that. At all.

When the mixture is foaming and a bit browned, add the drained beans. Stir them in well. Cook for another 8 or 9 minutes, stirring regularly, until the butter seems to be mostly absorbed by them and they are fairly dry. Again, they may start to want to stick, so keep up with the stirring. My sugar, etc, formed hard brown lumps when I added the beans, but they dissolved again as the beans cooked so that was fine.

Add the tomato sauce and reduce the heat to fairly low. The beans should be just simmering. Cook for thirty minutes, stirring regularly (but it will need less attention than during the first phase of cooking) until the sauce has thickened and everything is well amalgamated.

I used our own home-made tomato sauce, which is not too thick. Most commercial sauces are likely to be thicker, and you might want cut back on the tomato sauce a bit and thin it with some of the bean cooking liquid. They're your beans so use your judgement on how you would like the sauce.

Serve in a bowl or over toast or rice. These keep and reheat well - the sauce may need a little thinning when you are reheating. 




Last year at this time I made Pan-Cooked Sweet Potatoes with Balsamic Drizzle. I guess this is the time of year when I want hot, substantial food but don't really want to turn the oven on for hours anymore.

Posted in: Ontario Food