Stovetop Baked Beans

This stovetop baked beans recipe is super quick to pull together and cooks on the stove in about two hours. It is one of our family’s favorite breakfast recipes. When I first made it, I baked the beans in the oven. The second time I made them on the stove and they tasted exactly as good as if they were really baked. It was so much easier to keep an eye on them too – I did not have to take the hot dish out of the oven to check on it, and not having to heat up the whole house baking beans in the hot summer months is a bonus too!

Our family has fond memories of eating baked beans on picnics when we lived in England. We would get organic canned baked beans, heat them on a tiny portable gas stove and eat them with bread and butter sandwiches. I am happy to say that my kids love this recipe as much as the canned baked beans we used to buy then – they say that they taste just as good. They love to eat them with some sourdough toast for breakfast and fried eggs or sausages for lunch or dinner.

Why you’ll love this stovetop baked beans recipe

1. It uses store cupboard ingredients which most of us already have on hand.
2. It cooks on the stove – no need to heat up the oven. It is much easier to keep an eye on it this way too!
3. It is easy to reheat and freezes well too.
4. It is easy to double or even triple this recipe and have a great reakfast or lunch option for more than one day.
5. It is child friendly – I cannot guarantee that every child will love it but the sauce is smooth and slightly sweet, with no ‘bits’ that children sometimes dislike, and my kids regularly ask me to make these baked beans for them.

Ingredients for this baked beans recipe

• 2 1/2 cups dry beans – I used medium sized red beans
• 1/3 cup tomato paste
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp molasses
• 2 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• about 1 1/2 tsp salt, or to taste
• 4 1/2 cups chiclen stock, or other stock of your choice
• 2 tbsp white flour, to thicken the sauce
• 2 tbsp butter, to serve

Directions for making the stovetop baked beans

Step 1

The day before you want to eat your baked beans, place the dry beans in a large bowl, cover with plenty of water (they will swell up and absorb quite a lot of water as they soak) and leave to sit somewhere warm for about 8-12 hours (they will be even fine left for up to 24 hours). So if you want them for breakfast, put them to soak before you go to bed, or put them to soak in the morning if you want to make them for supper.

Step 2

When you are ready to cook, drain and rinse your soaked beans and place them in a large heavy bottomed saucepan. Add the tomato paste, soy sauce, molasses, garlic and onion powders, salt and stock. Then stir it all together gently.

Step 3

Turn the heat on medium high and let the beans come to boil. When they boil, reduce the heat to low, give them a good stir, cover and let simmer for about 2 hours. If you chose smaller bean variety for this recipe, they may be ready in much less time so keep an eye on them. Similarly, larger bean varieties may need more time to cook to become tender. While the beans are cooking, stir them once or twice and check to make sure the level of liquid is not getting too low (the beans need to be covered with stock to cook properly and become tender). You may need to add a little more stock, although I rarely find that necessary.

Step 4

When the beans are tender, it is time to thicken the sauce. It is not strictly necessary, so if you want to avoid adding flour at all costs, skip this step. However, the addition of flour makes the sauce thick, smooth and silky and without it the sauce will have a soup-like consistency. Another alternative to flour would be to simmer this dish uncovered until the sauce reduces and thickens.

Now place the two tablespoons of flour in a cup, add a few tablespoons of sauce and mix it in well with a spoon, using the back of the spoon to ensure that the sauce is smooth and there are no lumps of flour left. Stir this mixture into the beans in the pot and let it simmer, still stirring, for a couple of minutes until the sauce thickens.

Step 5

Take the pot off the heat and stir in the butter. This will add such a delicious buttery creaminess to this dish!

Step 6

Serve the baked beans with some buttered sourdough biscuits or toast. I garnished mine with some green onions. Some crispy fried onions could be a nice addition too. We sometimes eat these stovetop baked beans with fried eggs or sausage – they make a great lunch or even dinner option served this way!

How did you like this recipe? Let me know in the comments below!

Check out my other breakfast recipes

• Baked Oatmeal With Applesauce And Dates
• Sourdough Breakfast Casserole With Chicken And Hash Browns
• Sourdough French Toast Casserole With Fresh Strawberries
• Crustless Quiche