I had half a tin of baked beans left over from last night’s tea, and I reheated them in a way that made them taste amazing. Half a tin of baked beans is perfect for two slices of toast, in my opinion. I heated a full tin last night, and I intended to have half of it for my tea. When it came to lunch today, I wanted to reheat the other half, but there were a few steps I needed to take so they wouldn’t taste bland.
Baked beans can taste really good a day after heating them, but I find that they can dry out, and when I put them into my pot, there isn’t really any sauce. So, when I popped the leftover beans into the pot to heat up, I instantly added about a third cup of water to get started on making a sauce for them. But if it’s just water, it will taste bland. That can’t be the case when it comes to my lunch, so I had to raid the fridge and the cupboard to see what I could do to make them taste better.
The first thing I did was add a generous amount of paprika, followed by a pinch of chilli flakes, salt and pepper. I let that heat for a while, but the beans still seemed rather watery.
So, I turned up the heat slightly (now medium) and grabbed some tomato paste, squeezing about a teaspoon and a half into the pot and mixing it around. This recovered some of the tomato sauce flavours I had lost when I cooked and cooled the baked beans the night before.
Finally, I decided to go in with an unexpected ingredient that I rather enjoyed. I had some spinach to use up, so I cut up the leaves into smaller pieces and let them heat and wilt in the pot with the beans over a medium heat.
Adding the spinach seemed a bit counterintuitive, but it made all the difference. The main thing I struggled to achieve with these leftover baked beans was the texture. The flavour was pretty easy to recreate and even improve.
But the texture needed to be just right for it to go over my two slices of toast. The spinach, as it wilted and became soft, became a good base for the beans and added an almost creamy texture to them.
Not only that, but it added some extra nutrients without changing the flavour drastically. Spinach is a somewhat bland-tasting leaf, but when it is used in the right way, it can add a huge amount to many dishes. Apparently, one of them is beans on toast.