Tips and advice for cooking a bean recipe in the oven

beanscasserole

The other week I tried cooking the braised carrots, date and chickpea recipe from Ottolenghi, published on the Guardian that I have put below.

It was delicious and super easy. As someone who doesn't eat much meat I often turn to dried beans to provide a bit of substance to otherwise vegetarian or vegan meals. However, I can't find any other recipes that cook dried beans in a casserole-like dish straight in the oven.

1) Why is this?
2) What tips are there for experimenting with my own recipe?
3) Is there a rule of thumb for converting stove top recipes to oven cooked recipes?

Prep 30 min
Soak Overnight
Cook 2 hr 25 min
Serves 4-6

300g dried chickpeas, soaked overnight in plenty of cold water and 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped
6 garlic cloves, roughly chopped
2cm piece fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
1 large green chilli, roughly chopped, seeds and all
15g coriander leaves, roughly chopped
75ml olive oil
1½ tsp ground cumin
1½ tsp ground cinnamon
2 medjool dates, pitted and roughly chopped
1 tbsp tomato paste
4 carrots, peeled and each cut at an angle into 2 or 3 large chunks (450g)
2 bay leaves
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda
Salt and black pepper
1-2 lemons, zest finely grated, to get 1½ tsp, and juiced, to get 2 tbsp
120g feta, roughly crumbled
1 tsp caraway seeds, toasted and roughly crushed
1-2 tbsp parsley leaves, roughly chopped

Heat the oven to 180C (160C fan)/350F/gas 4. Drain the soaked chickpeas and set aside.

Put the onion, garlic, ginger and chilli in a food processor, and pulse a few times until very finely chopped but not pureed, scraping down the sides of the bowl as you go. Add the coriander, and pulse a couple of times more, just to mix through.

On a medium-high flame, heat two tablespoons of oil in a large, heavy-based cast-iron pot with a lid. Add the onion mixture and cook for about four minutes, stirring occasionally, then stir in the cumin, cinnamon, dates and tomato paste, and cook for a minute more, or until fragrant. Add the drained chickpeas, carrots, bay leaves, bicarbonate of soda, 1.2 litres water and a good grind of black pepper, and bring to a boil, skimming off any froth that comes to the surface. Cover and bake for two hours, or until the chickpeas are very soft and the sauce has turned thick and rich. Stir in the lemon juice and two teaspoons of salt, then leave to cool for about 10 minutes.

While the chickpeas are cooking, put the feta in a small bowl with the caraway, lemon zest, parsley and remaining three tablespoons of olive oil, and leave to marinade.

To serve, spoon the feta mixture over the chickpeas and serve directly from the cooking pot.

Best Answer

  1. I don't know why you didn't find any recipes for baked beans. They are quite common in many cuisines around the world. If you have grown up in a Western European or a North American country, it is quite likely that in your culture, stovetop dishes are generally more widespread than oven dishes overall, not only with regard to beans - but oven dishes still exist, including ones made with dried beans.
  2. There is not much you need to do to convert a chickpea recipe to a beans recipe. Just give it more time in the oven, and it is likely to turn out quite good.
  3. When talking about beans, there is not much you need to do to convert stovetop to oven recipes. Unlike many other foods, beans are always cooked with wet heat, and they will behave quite similarly in the oven as on stovetop. Since the oven warms up the food slower than stovetop, you will need to increase the cooking time, and it is more important to soak the beans sufficiently (overnight) before cooking them. I can't tell you how much longer you need to bake them, but be prepared to need large multiplicative factors - for example, I have a potato recipe which needs 3 hours in the oven before the potatoes are through, but if I precook the wet ingredients on stovetop and then only put it in the oven to overbake it with the topping, it takes about 20 minutes on stovetop to cook the potatoes. So, if you do a stovetop beans recipe in the oven, just check for doneness every hour or so and monitor the liquid level, adding water or stock if too much has evaporated.

If you don't have the patience to oven cook your beans, or you dislike the thought of wasting too much energy or of letting the oven run overnight, you can make casseroles with parcooked beans, which need much less time in the oven, frequently under one hour.

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