These flavorful creamy beans in a white wine and sundried tomato sauce are an easy vegetarian dinner or side dish! This recipe works with any type of beans: white beans, borlotti beans or kidney beans are all good choices. Serve with bread, sweet potatoes or grains for a simple meal.
If you’re looking to eat more beans, adding them to the ever popular “marry me chicken” style sauce is a pretty good way to up the appeal! In this recipe, we take it a step further and bake them until they bubble, with a crispy cheesy topping.
All of a sudden, having beans for dinner sounds pretty great!
I’ve made quite a few vegetarian riffs of “marry me chicken” (me and all the Tik Tok food accounts) but this iteration of the sauce is a little different to the ones in my Marry me Butter Bean Pasta and my Marry Me Lentils, because this time I used white wine in the base. I just felt like the beans were going to need a little more oomph behind them, and this was perfection.
Top Tips & Ingredient Swaps
- Use any beans! I have used borlotti and cannellini beans but this should work with any white beans (navy beans, butter beans, etc), pinto beans, or red kidney beans. Even black beans could work but rinse them really well so that the color doesn’t get too muddied!
- The spinach is optional. I like to include a little something green, but it is fine without it. A little kale could work too.
- We use a small amount of veggie stock in this recipe. If you don’t want to make up such a small amount, feel free to use water but make sure to season the pan really well. As an alternative, if you are using home cooked beans, use some of the cooking water, especially if it has been salted. The water in the fancy jars of beans can be great for this purpose too, but the water from unsalted cans isn’t going to add much flavor.
- I like my sundried tomatoes to be in tiny pieces for this recipe, so I run them through a mini chopper.
- The cheese that goes in the sauce can be parmesan, pecorino or a generic Italian hard cheese. DOP Italian hard cheeses use animal rennet in their processing, meaning they aren’t strictly vegetarian, so you’re looking for a non-DOP cheese using vegetarian rennet. In the UK, look for the V sign on the packaging – it will likely be a “Italian hard cheese” or “pasta cheese”. In the US, check out the ingredients – American made parmesans are usually fine.
- If you don’t want to use wine, you can use vegetable broth and add a squeeze of lemon juice at the end. (Or just pop over to my “Marry Me” Gnocchi recipe and make that sauce instead. The yield will be a little higher with that recipe, so you will have more space for other ingredients too.)
Variations
This is a flexible recipe; you can do your own thing with it.
Reduce the beans to one can (or even get rid of the beans altogether) and try adding in one or more of these other ingredients:
- Boiled pasta or gnocchi
- Roasted cauliflower florets
- Roasted eggplant cubes
- Roasted sweet potato cubes
- Chopped steamed broccoli
- Chopped steamed or sauteed asparagus
Serve me with…
Creamy “Marry Me” Bean Bake
Ingredients
- 2 shallots, sliced
- 4 cloves garlic
- ½ cup (8 Tbsp) sun dried tomatoes, soaked in oil, finely chopped
- ¼ tsp red pepper or chili flakes
- 1 tsp dried sage
- 1 tsp dried thyme
- ½ tsp smoked paprika
- ½ cup (120 ml) white wine
- ¼ cup (60 ml) vegetable stock
- 28 oz (800 g) canned beans, drained
- ½ cup (120 ml) heavy (double) cream
- ¾ cup (75 g) parmesan, pecorino or other Italian hard cheese, grated
- 1 handful baby spinach, chopped
- fresh basil, chopped
- 1.5 cups (150 g) grated mozzarella , for topping
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 220C / 450F.
- Heat a couple spoonfuls of the oil from the jar of sundried tomatoes in a cast iron skillet (or any pan that can go between the stove and the oven) over a low-medium heat.Saute the shallots until soft, then add the garlic and saute until just fragrant.2 shallots, 4 cloves garlic
- Add the sundried tomatoes, red pepper flakes, sage, thyme and smoked paprika. Saute until the herbs are fragrant.1/2 cup sun dried tomatoes, 1 tsp dried sage, 1 tsp dried thyme, 1/2 tsp smoked paprika, 1/4 tsp red pepper or chili flakes
- Add the white wine and let it bubble for a few minutes until the harshest alcohol smell has passed and the amount is reducing a little.1/2 cup white wine
- Add the cream and cheese, stir through until the cheese has melted and a sauce has formed. Add salt and pepper to taste.1/2 cup heavy (double) cream, 3/4 cup parmesan, pecorino or other Italian hard cheese
- Add the beans, spinach and basil, and mix through the sauce. Assess the thickness of the sauce and add in the vegetable stock until it is fairly runny (a little runnier than you would like – it will thicken up in the oven). You may need a little more or less stock than the recipe states depending on how much your wine cooked down, and how thick your cream is.28 oz canned beans, 1 handful baby spinach, fresh basil, 1/4 cup vegetable stock
- Sprinkle mozzarella over the top and bake for 15 minutes, until bubbling and crisp. Allow it to rest for 5 minutes and then serve.1.5 cups grated mozzarella
