A watercolour of large pale butter beans in a dark red tomato sauce with a pool of olive oil
Generated with OpenAI gpt-image-1
Adapted from Gigantes plaki

Butter beans in tomato and oregano

An established dish converted to shelf-stable ingredients. Every substitution is documented below.

How long it keeps

About 6 months, set by Olive oil.

Indicative, for planning a build before you buy. The answer for a pack you already own is the best before date printed on it, and that only holds if it has been stored as the label says.

Serves
4
Burners
1
Pans
1
Water
0.1 L
Active
8 min
Total
30 min

Ingredients

A great deal of olive oil, which is not a mistake in the recipe. Gigantes is an oil dish; using a cautious amount gives you beans in thin tomato.

  1. Oil, dried onion three minutes on a gentle heat until it swells and softens.
  2. Garlic and oregano, thirty seconds.
  3. Passata, salt, 100 ml water. Simmered fifteen minutes until it darkens.
  4. Drained butter beans in, very gently so they stay whole. Ten minutes more at a bare simmer.
  5. Off the heat, another thread of oil over the top, and left to stand five minutes before eating.

Butter beans are fragile once tinned. Stirring hard turns them to paste, so turn them through with a spoon under and over rather than around.

Better warm than hot, which is how it is eaten in Greece.

Serves 4 with bread.

What this was adapted from

Gigantes plaki: the Greek dish of large white beans baked in tomato with herbs and olive oil

  • dried gigantes soaked and baked for an hour → tinned butter beans finished on the hob

    Gigantes are a large butter bean and tinned ones are the same species already cooked. Losing the oven costs the dish its browned top; the trade is forty minutes and a bag of charcoal.