Bean Stew Recipe

Now, I've got to be honest, this started out as a proposed bean stew but I didn't follow a recipe and it became more of a basic sauce which I had with rice. That said, it was really nice. Bland, but nice. From the small number of dishes I made for my 5 day challenge, this was my favourite and I took to having it for dinner so I would have something to look forward to throughout the days!

Ingredients

Two cartons of chopped tomatoes

Kidney beans

Mixed bean ‘salad’

2 or 3 spring onions

Mixed frozen veg

Method

• Chop spring onions and remove lids to other ingredients - put to one side
• Preheat pan with about a cm of water in the pan (we want into heat up without the pan burning, but don't want the water to splash out and burn the chef, either!)
• Rinse spring onions and place in pan
• Add tomatoes and allow to bubble and thicken
• Rinse the beans in a colander - the mixed ones came in a vinaigrette so this was especially important.
• Add beans to pan
• Add a handful of mixed veg to the pan
• Transfer to an oven-proof dish and oven cook for 20 mins on a medium temperature

If budget was no problem, I would have added a few different things for a range of dish variations. I think it would still be possible to make a big batch cheaply (although probably not for less than £3!) if you increased the amounts used, freeze it up and turn it into a selection of meals.

I think this would have worked well as follows:

Salsa with nachos: add a chopped up chilli, grab some nachos and grated cheese. Pile up in an oven proof dish and cook for 15-20 mins in a pre-heated oven (about 180°c)

Chilli con carne: cook off some crushed garlic with mince meat or Quorn in a frying pan, and add sauce to it. Heat through and add some chilli powder to taste.

You could adapt pretty much any of the ingredients. As I had initially planned for the meal to be bean stew, I used the spring onions as an alternative to leek, but you could swap them out for real onions or leek. All in all, the world’s your oyster with this one!