This baked beans recipe tastes so similar to Heinz it’s almost scary. Except homemade baked beans don’t have underlying tones of artificial flavour, and the sauce isn’t slimy which I really hate about canned baked beans!
These British baked beans can be made with dried or canned beans. Quick and easy, very economical and utterly addictive!
Heinz baked beans recipe
So there’s no misunderstanding, let me explain upfront that this recipe is for British style baked beans which comes in a semi-clear tomato sauce and is traditionally served for breakfast. It’s completely different to Southern Baked Beans which is a Southern food staple and comes with a darker, more intense flavoured sweet/savoury sauce.
Specifically, this recipe today is a copycat of Heinz baked beans. A British export, firmly adopted by Aussies as a breakfast-lunch-dinner staple.
Crack open a can, tip it over toast and microwave – that was the standard method.
Heating it up in a saucepan was the posh method. Add a slice of cheese – now that was getting real fancy!
I think we have the evolution of cooking shows and rise and rise of the internet to thank for the discovery of homemade versions of canned food favourites. And for me, homemade baked beans was one of the greatest eye openers. How simple it is. And how much tastier it is.
And as someone who always had an issue with the sliminess of the Heinz baked beans sauce, discovering homemade baked beans was revolutionary! 😂
What you need to make baked beans from scratch
Here’s what you need to make baked beans from scratch:
Canned vs dried beans
You can make this baked beans recipe with dried or canned beans. The base recipe uses dried beans because:
you can’t get canned navy beans / haricot beans here in Australia, you can only get dried (as far as I am aware); and
cooked dried beans taste better, and you can control the texture. Canned beans are always bloated from sitting in liquid, so they’re on the soft side.
Beans used for Baked Beans
Navy beans, also known as Haricot Beans, are the beans used in commercially produced canned baked beans. They are white beans that are slightly smaller than Cannellini beans.
However, any small to medium beans will work just fine here. They don’t even need to be white!
Chicken vs vegetable stock/broth
Chicken stock gives the sauce a better flavour because it has more complex flavours than vegetable stock because it’s made from meat. It doesn’t make this dish taste “chicken-like” or meaty once cooked.
However, vegetable stock does work fine but for best results, I recommend using homemade vegetable stock (it’s the easiest of all stocks to make, and really worth doing homemade).
How to make baked beans from scratch
It is literally a “mix it all in the pot and simmer” job.
The only thing to do at the end is to add cornflour/cornstarch to thicken the sauce. This needs to be done at the end because excess stirring or prolonged cooking over heat makes cornflour lose its thickening powers (in case you were wondering why cornflour is always added at the end of recipes!!)
How to serve baked beans
Traditionally thought of as a side for breakfast (think a big English breakfast with poached, fried or scrambled eggs, bacon, mushrooms, sausages and toast) or piled onto toast (try adding CHEESE!). But there’s so much more we can do with baked beans to make it an economical, seriously delicious meal! Here are a few suggestions:
Chicken and beans – sprinkle chicken (or any chops, or sausages) with salt and pepper. Pan fry in butter. Serve with baked beans on the side which will act as the “sauce” as well as the starch for dinner;
Sausage and beans – either slice smoked sausages, squeeze the filling out of sausage casings or use ground sausage. Cook it in a pot, add baked beans, stir through spinach = dinner in a pot!
Stuff baked potatoes (add cheese to this too!)
As a side for any dinner – serve it as the starch on a dinner plate. Beans are low in GI so they’ll keep you fuller for longer!
Emergency nachos – pile over corn chips and add a ton of cheese. How can you go wrong??
Stuff an omelette – yep, really. Make an omelette and stuff it with cheesy baked beans!
Breads for dunking
Here are a few bread options – for toasting, dunking, mopping! The first 3 breads are all ideal for slicing > toasting > smothering with baked beans.
For me personally, I like to serve it in a bowl with bread for dunking. The whole “smother toast” thing doesn’t do it for me because I like to eat toast with my hands (well, put another way, I hate using a knife and fork for toast).
And if you pile baked beans over toast, eating it with your hands is messy business.
So I prefer the bowl method – spoon + bread for dunking. Practical and effective! – Nagi x
Watch how to make it
Watch how to make this baked beans recipe – and see how truly similar it is to Heinz baked beans!
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Homemade Heinz Baked Beans
Ingredients
Beans – choose ONE (Note 1):
- 2 cups (14 oz) dried Navy beans (aka Haricot) or other white beans
- 3 x 400g/14oz cans harricot/navy beans, cannellini or any white beans , drained
Baked beans:
- 2 cups chicken stock/broth , low sodium, OR homemade vegetable stock (Note 2)
- 1 cup water
- 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
- 6 tbsp ketchup or Aussie/British tomato sauce (Note 3)
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 3 tbsp brown sugar
- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder (or more onion powder)
- 1/2 tsp onion powder (or more garlic powder)
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1 tsp salt
Sauce thickening:
- 8 tsp cornflour / cornstarch
- 1/4 cup water
Instructions
Cook dried beans:
- No need to do these steps if using canned beans, start with Step 1 under "Baked Beans" below.
- Soak beans in a big bowl of water for 8 – 24 hrs, then drain.
- Skim foam – Place beans in a large pot of water over high heat. Bring to a simmer, then skim off foam.
- Simmer Reduce heat so it's simmering gently (medium or medium low). Partially cover with lid (leaving a crack for steam to escape), then cook for 1 – 1.5 hrs until just tender. (Start checking at 45 min). Beans should be still slightly firm on inside (they're cooked more in the sauce). Drain, use per recipe.
Baked Beans:
- Mix – Place all Baked Beans ingredients in a pot (except beans) and stir, then add beans.
- Simmer – Bring to a simmer, then lower heat to medium low and simmer for 20 minutes, without the lid. Stir every now and then so the beans don't catch on the bottom of the pot.
Thicken sauce:
- Mix cornflour with water. Pour into pot while stirring, then cook for 2 minutes until sauce thickens – it will thicken quickly. (Note 3)
- Check for salt: Taste and add more salt if needed.
- Serve it the traditional way – piled over hot buttered toast. Or ladle into bowls, eat with a spoon and dunk in hot crusty bread! Popular breads – simple crusty Artisan bread, Irish Soda Bread (No yeast) and No Yeast Sandwich Bread
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
Originally published May 2014. Updated with more streamlined, better recipe (skipped unnecessary extras that didn’t add to the end result), new photos, new video and Life of Dozer section added in May 2020!
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Terrific. This is the best. Not going back to canned baked beans ever. Good recipe. Like the way the system calculates how much to use for how much you want to make. Very helpful. Hi Dozer.
Never having the canned version to compare, we liked this with full English breakfast. The taste is mild making it perfect for breakfast. The only issue was cooked beans seemed too hard. When I make this again, I plan to cook beans longer. Thank you Nagi for the recipe. 美味しかったよ。
Instead of putting the ham hock in with the beans, I pressure cooked them to make a stock so I could skim any fat from the liquid, then used this nice hammy flavoured stock to simmer my beans in. The result baked beans in a Smokey ham flavoured sauce yummy
Just what I Was looking for Nagi, I’ve invested in a pressure canner so I was after a good bean recipe. I’m a ham flavoured sauce man so I was thinking of popping in a ham hock during the simmering, what do you think ?
I made a half recipe using local dried small white beans. They were cooked at 25 mins!
Perfect recipe! I’ve been craving heinz beans for so long and this recipe really hits the spot!
Hi Nagi, looking forward to making this. With the stock (not just for this recipe, but more generally), do you use stock in a tetra pack or stock powder? Thanks
Hi Jo, I use stock that’s made up in a carton. You could however use powder and make up your own if you like. N x
Ketchup is a table condiment made with tomatoes, seasoning and spices. Look out for Prima Ketchup in Spain. Look online for Heinz tomatoe ketchup to see what the UK version looks like.
Spot on! Heinz Baked Beans Dupe without the tin can taste! Excellent Recipe! Thank you so much!
Hi. I am a bit confused about the tomato sauce / ketchup. I live in Spain and although I can find tinned Heinz baked beans they are quite expensive so would like to try to make my own. Here in Spain we have tinned tomatoes already cooked and blended. Would that be it?
I watched the video hoping to see the tin. Could you add a photo of it please?
Will let you know how they turn out.
Thanks
Ketchup is a table condiment made with tomatoes, seasoning and spices. Look out for Prima Ketchup in Spain. Look online for Heinz tomatoe ketchup to see what the UK version looks like.
Hi Susan and thanks for taking the time out to answer me. I appreciate it. I don’t think I expressed my question clearly – my bad.
My confusion was with this bit: – 2. Tomato Sauce – If you’re in the US or Canada, don’t use what you call “tomato sauce”, use ketchup (Aussie/British Tomato Sauce is a type of ketchup, that’s what this recipe needs).
So I wasn’t sure if I should be using Ketchup or what we call in Spain – Tomato Frito like the stuff Orlando makes.
I used that in the end and they turned out pretty good! I thought they weren’t quite orange enough so added a squirt of Heinz Ketchup but I think that kinda spoiled the taste a wee bit.
Anyway really happy with how they turned out.
And I used a slow cooker both to cook the beans overnight after a 24 hour soak and to cook the sauce. I first used the “Rice” setting to boil and then used the usual slow cooked setting to simmer.
Will definitely be making again. I sent a photo to my daughter and she thought they were the real deal!
Looking forward to trying your other recipes. Keep up the good work!
Ann
These were delicious and so, so simple to make. Seemingly quite easy to modify depending on your taste, but after a long week desperately craving beans on toast – these hit the spot for me perfectly. Thanks Nagi – I’ll definitely be making these again 🙂
Good day Nagi
First let me say I very very seldom respond to online recipes. I have just made a pot of your heinz beans and just have to tell you, they are probably the best beans I have ever eaten. Yes, they taste like canned Heinz beans like we get in Canada, only better. Thank you so much for sharing this with everyone.
Silly question I’m sure, however, after soaking the beans could I put it all in the slow cooker overnight. I’ve got an 8am breakfast to prepare for and I love these beans. It would make my morning much easier if they could cook overnight.
Oh My! Amazing, THANK YOU for this recipe.
I just made these, and they are amazingly like Heinz, and really, really good! Kudos on developing this recipe. I’m an American who lived in Britain for a while, and has a hard time finding Heinz beans here (for a reasonable price). American baked beans are sickly sweet. I did discover that American canned pork & beans is very similar to Heinz, but I’m now a vegetarian, and also a cheapskate, so I love that I can now make my own!
Did u have a different baked beans recipe with a tomato sauce base?
Hi Nagi!
Didn’t you have another baked bean recipe? I’m trying to find it as I love them, they had red wine in the recipe… or am I imagining all that??
Same! Where did the red wine version go? I loved that recipe but never wrote it down because I thought I could just come back to the web page… please help!
Hi Nagi,
I’m also looking for the baked beans recipe made with red wine. I heard about it here:
https://justwineapp.com/article/10-tasty-vegetarian-recipes-made-with-wine
Do you still have it? 🙂
Thank you
Absolutely great baked beans. I’ve looked for a good recipe for ages as Boston baked beans are way too sweet for me. Finally found a recipe I love. My elderly friend said they’re the best beans he’s ever eaten… way better than tinned beans. I agree. Thanks Nagi.
Hi Just wanted to let you know that Worcestershire sauce in your recipe is not Vegan, I have added A1 Sauce to try and substitute.
Thanks
Pretty sure judging from the recipe calling for chicken stock, it’s not intended to be vegan. But FYI there are brands that make vegan worcestershire sauce; you just need to check the labels at your grocer. I’m in the Eastern US and my local grocery chain, Kroger, doesn’t use animal products in their store brand.
A great sub Chandy! N x
Thank you Nagi awesome recipe no more buying tins for me
Wahoo!! N x