30+ things to do with a can of beans

We’ve rounded up some excellent recipes and ideas that make brilliant use of canned beans, but no need to stop here. Pretty much any recipe that starts with cooking dried beans can work with their canned counterparts as well (just add them where you would the cooked beans). Whether black beans or pinto, cannellini or garbanzo, you can turn these tins of potential energy into an easy, delicious meal in 30 minutes or less. Here’s how.

Mix up a Dense Bean Salad

You might know these hearty, bean-heavy salads as fridge salads, or maybe you first learned about them when Violet Witchel went viral with her Mediterranean-inspired Dense Bean Salad (DBS) back in 2024. These salads are exactly what they sound like: hearty, boldly dressed and bean-forward; often, they include chopped vegetables, cheese and/or a bit of meat and other sturdy ingredients. Try a DBS with cannellinis, celery, herbs, and crumbled feta cheese or Violet’s sundried tomato or Thanksgiving-inspired versions (the latter makes great use of any leftover roasted sweet potatoes or Brussels sprouts).

But no need to hew to a specific recipe: DBS are flexible-format salads. They can accommodate nearly any kind of bean plus any assortment of odds and ends from your fridge and pantry. They keep and carry well, get tastier the longer they sit and are delicious on their own or as a sidekick to leafy greens, sandwiches, soups, you name it.

Marinate them

Marinated beans are DBS adjacent. They can be dressed up with all manner of salty, tangy, big-flavor items. Use this basic recipe as a starting point, and then add whatever you’ve got on hand (we like a combo of marinated artichokes, sliced roasted peppers, slivered red onion, torn green or Kalamata olives, capers… you get the idea). Writer-teacher-cook-infectious laugher Samin Nosrat makes an end-of-summer marinated bean salad that’s another excellent template for canned bean adventures. Her recipe uses cranberry beans but she encourages you to use whatever beans you’ve got.

Try a saucy bean bake

Canned beans bake up exceedingly well — they don’t require a ton of time in the oven because they’re already cooked, and they soak up whatever sauces they bathe in. Ali Slagle’s cheesy, cumin- and smoked paprika-scented black bean bake (which originally appeared in The New York Times, but which you can find a version of here) is as simple as it is hearty (turns out it is easy bein’ cheesy).

This vegan black bean bake shingles bright orange slices of sweet potato between layers of beans and tomato sauce, sort of like a Southwestern-inspired lasagna. Or try the creamy, tomatoey white bean crowd-pleaser Marry Me Beans, a riff on a chicken recipe of the same name, which is said to lead to… well, if not matrimony, then at least a happy belly. It’s a very forgiving dish and can use pretty much any canned white bean: butter/lima beans, cannellinis, great northern/white kidney beans.

Make old school baked beans

If you have a kid (or adult-size kid) whose idea of yummy beans is the cloyingly sweet ones from the can, they’ll love homemade baked beans, which offer all of the same comforting warmth minus the weird preservatives. Heat some rinsed, drained navy beans and add tomato paste or ketchup, dark brown sugar, yellow or brown mustard and a bit of molasses. You can cook some aromatics first, like chopped onions and/or crushed, peeled garlic cloves, and if you wish, a small hunk of good-quality bacon, and then add all the rest; simmer until the beans mingle with all of their party guests.

Pizza, pizza

Remember way back in 2017 when Deb Perelman, doyenne of the food blogosphere, published her Pizza Beans recipe and blew everyone’s minds? We do. Describing the dish at the time, Perelman said, “I like to think of this as a vegetable-rich (but not overwhelming, should you be trying to entice the hesitant) baked ziti where the ziti is replaced by giant beans.” Her recipe gained traction for a reason — who doesn’t want to eat pizza in all its forms? — but it uses dried gigante beans, which require soaking and thus some forethought. Fore-think no more — you can make a similar dish with canned beans. Try these Cheesy tomato beans, which use cannellini and tuck in some fresh tomatoes. Or the New York Times’ extremely popular take on the concept, which replaces the gooey mozzarella with crispy slices of broiled halloumi. If your family is meat friendly but bean averse, really lean into the pizza vibes with this pepperoni-topped version.

Soup it up

“Bean soup.” There’s perhaps no pair of words more comforting. Think beans and broth, creamy bean soups, bean soups so thick you can almost stand a spoon in them.

On the brothy end of the spectrum, there’s Italian pasta e fagioli, aka pasta fazool, a tomato-y soup polka-dotted with white beans, little tubes of pasta and ribbons of kale. Slightly thicker: Tuscan white bean soup or Hoppin John, that smoky Southern soup-stew often served on New Year’s Day to bring good luck. Stick-to-your-ribs thick: Cannelle et Vanille’s creamy, smoky, bread-bolstered Andalusian Chickpea Stew with crispy artichokes (and optional slivers of salty Spanish ham).

Rice and beans

As iconic as Fred and Ginger, as beloved as Ernie and Bert, rice and beans are an affordable, filling culinary duo that’s a go-to in home kitchens around the world. There are nearly as many iterations of the dish as there are types of beans and rice.

Go for cookbook author Mely Martínez’s Mexican black beans and rice, a popular side dish in Veracruz that makes a satisfying main in its own right, especially when served with guacamole or sliced avocado, crema or sour cream and any other fixings you like. If your crowd is extra hungry, try laying some fried eggs on top.

Jollof rice and beans is a West African rice-and-bean remix with its own unique flavor profile. There are many, many, many iterations — some using black-eyed peas, others adzuki or kidney beans — but this basic recipe for Nigerian Jollof Rice and Beans is a simple starting point for making the dish with canned beans (just swap in drained, rinsed black-eyed peas for the parboiled).

Red beans and rice is a Louisiana tradition, one that often relies on ham hocks or sausage for its smoky, savory depth of flavor. (It’s a common Monday meal and featured menu item at classic New Orleans restaurants; according to one origin story, Monday’s red beans often made use of the ham bones left over from Sunday’s roast). This vegetarian version offers some clever workarounds to skip the meat without sacrificing flavor, and uses canned kidney beans in place of the more customary dried.

Cook a curry

Bean curries are another no-fail choice, perfectly complemented by steamed basmati rice or a flat bread like naan or roti. This vegan three-bean curry uses a trio of canned varieties — kidney beans, white beans and black beans — all simmered in a spiced coconut-tomato broth. This Jamaican Butter Bean Curry combines butter beans and coconut milk with generous seasonings and planks of king oyster mushrooms.

Chickpeas also make excellent curries, giving the stews a meaty, toothsome bite. Madhur Jaffrey’s Spinach with Chickpeas leans into typical Punjabi seasonings. This Authentic Chana Masala is a spiced tomato curry that can accommodate potatoes as well (for aloo chana). Another delicious take on the concept, with coconut milk contributing a luxurious creaminess, is Alexandra Stafford’s Curried Chickpeas with Cauliflower and Coconut Milk, which is itself a mashup of recipes by Thomas Keller and Julia Turshen.

Beans + greens + grains

There’s really no end to the riffs on this culinary trinity, and that’s because it checks so many boxes: Flavor and texture? Yes. Satisfying? Sure thing. Affordable? You betcha — and nutritious to boot. As registered dietitian nutritionist Gena Hamshaw writes in her recent cookbook, A Grain, A Green, A Bean: “Whole grains, greens and beans are some of the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet. … When these foods are combined … they become even more powerfully nourishing.”

Try a pasta approach with Giada DeLaurentis’s recipe featuring creamy white beans, spinach and smoked cheese. Give Ali Slagle’s one-pot method a spin. Follow the lead of Sohla El-Waylly, who offers a brilliant technique for turning “any green, any bean, any pasta … into dinner.” Or take inspiration from Hamshaw, who stews pinto beans with collard greens and drizzles tahini dressing on top, then serves the whole mess with toast (which is, after all, made from grains). By that same token, beans and greens with garlic toast makes for a simple, satisfying lunch or light supper. Grab a can of beans, some hardy greens, a cooked grain (or crusty bread), and you really can’t go wrong.