‘Unusually soft, mushy, oddly bland’: the best (and worst) baked beans, tasted and rated by Felicity Cloake Our resident perfectionist applies her forensic insight to the high street’s baked bean offerings.
If you’re after a gourmet experience, I’d recommend the Bold Bean Co’s rich tomato baked beans (£3.50), because they remind me of those homemade beans you sometimes get with a fry-up at fancy cafes: intensely savoury and packed full of herbs.
Baked beans are one of those homely foods that are so familiar that most of us don’t give them even a second thought on the shelf – we reach for our usual brand, tick it off the list and reserve our mental bandwidth for more exciting foodstuffs.
To my surprise, I discovered very striking disparities between the ones I tested, so if you’re someone who routinely decants excess juice or reduces the sauce to achieve that authentic school dinner effect, you might be better off simply switching allegiance.
They don’t qualify here, because they are to ordinary baked beans what rye sourdough is to white sliced, but they’re bloody lovely all the same.
