The Best Ever Beans on Toast!

An easy meal for a Vegetarian is often a baked jacket potato or beans on toast. When I was younger we used to return from a camping weekend and, whilst my parents unpacked, my sister and I would be sent upstairs for a bath and then return downstairs with rosy cheeks and damp hair to a quick and easy supper of beans on toast before bed.

I have always loved this simple meal and it's definitely my "go to" meal when I surface from a migraine, need to line my stomach before a night out on the tiles or just want a quick comfort fix.

In my early twenties I met a girl who came to temp in my office. It turned out we had lots in common and liked all the same things. One day whilst discussing what we would make for tea, she mentioned a recipe for Bean Rarebit in a Marks and Spencer Salads and Snacks book. I had the same book, given by a family friend for my 21st birthday! I rushed home to make the posh beans on toast that night and, some 30 years later, still make it occasionally. I have adapted the recipe a little over the years but it remains a firm favourite.

Bean Rarebit (or posh beans on toast) Serves 1 hungry vegetarian

20g butter

1 small onion finely chopped

1 garlic clove crushed or grated

1/2 pepper, deseeded & thinly sliced 

1 can Heinz Five Beanz

2x15ml spoons tomato ketchup

1x15ml spoon vegetarian Worcestershire sauce

(I use Hendersons Yorkshire Relish)

Salt & Pepper

1x5ml chilli powder

Cheddar cheese grated

2 slices hot buttered toast

Melt the butter, add onion, garlic, pepper and fry til soft. Add the beans, ketchup, W sauce, salt, pepper, chilli powder. Cook for 5 mins. Add the cheese and stir for 3 mins until melted. Place on hot buttered toast and serve immediately (like my lava latte, I like mine hot). Enjoy!

The recipe from the early 1980s used baked beans and kidney beans but I use the Five Beans now. It also states a green pepper but now, of course, we have the choice of red, orange, yellow and, I have recently discovered, black pepper!