for many growing up in the uk baked beans serve as the ultimate comfort food, like proust's madeleine they can guide us through our life stopping at each greasy spoon, family home or student flat where we consumed a certain version of beans on toast. i remember when jam street in walley range, now a pub/bar mainly frequented by alcoholics used to be a greasy spoon cafe, mine and molly's parents would take us there and we would be served heinz baked beans with two slices of white warburtons bread, sometimes a hot chocolate on the side. I could continue talking about all the other formative experiences i have had while eating a plate of beans on toast, but i think we would be here a very long time and it might not be very interesting.
ingredients: 51% haricot beans, 34% tomato puree, water, sugar, modified maize starch, salt, dried onion, maltodextrin, dried paprika, rapeseed oil, clove extract, colour: paprika extraxt; capsicum extract, cinnamon extract, natural chili flavoring, garlic oil, antioxidant: ascorbic acid; acidity regulator: citric acid
price: 35p
opening the pull tab can we see the beans are actually quite rich in colour and the sauce is by no means watery. tasting the sauce cold it tastes very similar to what i remember heinz tasting like, a full rich flavour. today i ate them with two slices of rye and caraway toast (free from from work) and three lidl hashbrowns (about 85p for the bag.) straight away from the packaging you know what newgate is about, they are an off brand heinz who manage to pack the same punch or thereabouts at less than half the price. At 35p these beans are an absolute bargain and out of all of the beans i have eaten, possibly the best value for money. the only concerns i had regarding these beans was the length of the ingredients list, it has something called maltodextrin in it which appears to be what thickens the sauce and "improve flavour"[Susan Featherstone, in A Complete Course in Canning and Related Processes (Fourteenth Edition), 2015 8.4.1.7 Maltodextrins] it sounds pretty mad and like something i don't want to eat but it doesn't seem to be bad for you. it also has ascorbic acid and citric acid in it, which i guess is to prevent you getting scurvy if for whatever reason you decide you don't want to eat anything other than newgate baked beans (in a rich tomato sauce) for the rest of your life.
ingredients:44% haricot beans, 32% tomatoes, water, sugar, modified maize starch, salt, onion powder, paprika powder, natural onion flavouring, paprika extract, natural flavouring.
price: 22p
No pull tab on this tin! when i effortlessly opened the tin with my tin opener i was surprised by how rich the sauce looked. it was certainly thinner than that of the newgate beans (possibly because of the lack of maltodextrin) taste testing it off the end of a fork i found the sauce is much richer than expected, in spite of it being much waterier than the newgate ones, and containing much tomatoes instead of tomato puree, which i thought would affect the flavour more, they do taste particularly sweet, possibly more so than the newgate beans, the big downfall of these beans is the lack of ascorbic acid and citric meaning if i was to hide out in the woods with a ration of nothing but these means i may die of scurvy. it does however have modified maize starch in it which has like 12 e numbers, which make me go absolutely mental, so maybe that would help with the wilderness survival. Digging into the beans on top of two slices of "SOFT THICK WHOLEMEAL" (one cut into two triangles) i found that through cooking the sauce does thicken nicely, the sauce is a lot less sweet and rich than when i had a taste from the tin, definitely less rich than the newgate beans. However in otherways i prefer these beans they are very basic and can act as a good base for adding your own flavour, they are also almost unprocessed, if it wasn't for modified maize starch and the natural flavouring, which isn't necessarily natural, only derived from a natural source [https://www.reading.ac.uk/foodlaw/label/defs-flavours.htm]. At the price point of 22p these beans are pretty mint to be honest, might be making the switchto them soon.
ingredients:organic haricot beans 52%, water, organic tomatoes 19%, organic concentrated apple juice, organic brown rice flour, sea salt, organic onion powder, organic cassia, organic nutmeg, organic soy sauce(soya beans, water, sea salt, shochu, koji seeds), organic garlic powder, organic dill, organic cloves, organic sunflour oil, natural capsicum flavouring
price: £1.30
due to being organic and ethically source whole earth's beans are quite the step up in price, however with my work discount they come out at about the same, if not less than a tin of heinz. tasting the sauce out of the tin there is almost a refreshing aspect to the flavour - most likely due the the unorthodox apple juice which whole earth uses to sweeten most of there range instead of using refined sugars. The sauce was less thick than either of lidl's due to the lack of processed ingredients used for thickening, however the sauce does thicken nicely with cooking. The beans are definitely less cooked than lidl's but i wouldn't say they were undercooked, just more obvious you are eating a real bean and not a bean shaped piece of mush. flavour wise i am a big fan of the whole earth beans. When i was a kid i used to love them - so did many - and then they changed there recipe one day and the beans became near inedible, awful. it wasn't until my friend molly said they were good again and i tried them and have since added them to my bean repertoire. flavour wise these beans have a certain heartiness to them that comes from the wholefoods - its not your traditional heinz flavour profile, but i appreciate them taking baked beans somewhere else. and have they failed? no, not at all. the beans taste fresher and the apple juice isnt over powering, the addition of soy sauce adds a lovely umami undertone. the one thing i would say is they lack the richness of lidls range are these beans value for money? maybe not if you are buying them at the price listed above, worth a try but not a regular thing, although they do sell them cheaper in other shops i have seen. if you really love them you can buy a crate and get a wholesale discount like i did. in spite of lacking the richness of lidls range these beans are a solid choice for the bean lover who perhaps is a little fed up with astronomical amounts of salt and sugar on there toast, and even those who aren't fed up - just add some extra and see what they are like! upon further research i will confirm but it is possible that the apple juice concentrate will keep the scurvy away as well![https://www.enterprisepub.com/stories/an-apple-a-day-keeps-the-scurvy-away,13539]
ingredients:haricot beans 45%, water, double concentrated tomato puree 4%, agave syrup 2%, onion, maize starch, sunflower oil, salt, ground black pepper, antioxidant:ascorbic acid.
price: £1.30
opening a tin of suma low sugar beans is a slightly worrying experience at first, with the sauce looking suspiciously similar to some sort of jelly cat food. However after cooking they sauce becomes a much more normal, saucy, consistency. trying a bit of the sauce off the end of a fork i find that it has a lovely round flavour, however it lacks the acidity that adds to the richness of the other bean sauces. looking at the ingredients list it appears they have skimped a tiny bit on the haricot beans, and maybe the tomato sauce? it's hard to say as they did use double concentrate. these being the low sugar version they only contain a tiny amount of agave syrup as a sweetener, which definitely works in there favour, the full sugar version of these beans is not very good, i will try it again at some point so i can write about it, but i didn't want to spend 80p on beans i don't like. eating these beans on toast they are pretty good, to be honest they are a little bit bland. i used to put smoked paprika and sometimes cumin in them which was pretty peng, or harrisa paste. these beans are one of the best base beans due to there short ingredients list. i used to eat a lot of them but its hard to not start disliking the flavour. will they stop you from getting scurvy? maybe, they do have ascorbic acid but no citric acid and i don't know enough science stuff to tell you what that means.
ingredients:haricot beans 51%, tomatoes 33%, water, sugar, modified maize starch, salt, onion powder, paprika extraxt, paprika powder, flavouring, onion oil, garlic extraxt.
price: 45p
trying a bit of the sauce that had collected around the rim of the bean tin the sauce is quite nice. it certainly is a step up in sweetness from the organic beans we looked at above, it does however feel like lacks the richness of the newgate beans. eating these beans of two slices of some free bread from work, without butter cause i ran out a few days ago and keep forgetting. they are a little disappointing. there is no real richness to the sauce and they are not very tomato-ey either. there is nothing wrong with them in particular but they are essentially just a worse version of lidl's beans, its not like the suma beans where even though they are a bit bland they have there own unique flavour profile, for 45p this doesnt seem particularly woth it. also what the fuck is onion oil? that sounds mad. a quick google of onion oil leads to a LOT of videos of people making diy onion oil for extreme hair growth? maybe these beans can move a few points up the ranks if i see a sudden increase in hair growth, something no other bean brand so far has been able to boast of.
ingredients:beans 50%, tomatoes 36%, water, sugar, spirit vinegar, modified cornflour, salt, spice extracts, herb extract.
price: £1.30
it is a saturday and i just bought some lidl hashbrowns and discounted farmhouse loaf to compliment the heinz beanz. do they live up to the hype? i suspect not, at a price of £1.30 its hard to imagine them being that much better than the own brand alternatives. licking some sauce from the lid of the tin the sauce is pretty good. it is sweet, but not overpoweringly so, and has a good round flavour that is definitly differentiates itself from the own brand beans, this is most likely due to there secret recipe, looking at the vaugeness of the ingredients list they don't tell you any of the spices or herbs they use, they are even scared to tell you they are using haricot beans! so taking the first bite of beans on wholemeal seeded farmhouse 8 seed blend toast i am pleasently suprised. the beans certainly have a rounder flavour than any of the other brands i have tried, however they perhaps taste slightly less strong than lidl's beans, if i had just heated the beans in the pan like the instructions said the sauce would have been way to watery, but after actually cooking it (the correct way to have beans) and a little bit of the sauce had cooked off it became almost creamy. are heinz good? yes. are they as good as lidl's simply baked beans? maybe. are they over four times the price? yes. would you get scurcy if you ate nothing but heinz? i think so.
ingredients:fava beans 42%, water. tomato puress, modified maize startch, salt, herbs & spices, concentrated lemon juice
price: gift but £2.09 on there website
so i wrote out like the whole first half of this review but then my laptop died and i hadn't saved it! so i will try and get the gist of what i was saying then.
hodmedods are a bunch of madlads for the fava bean, they absolutely love it and go mental for it. i have often heard people refer to fava beans as not good. on the other hand fava beans have been a crop in the uk since the iron age in spite of not being part of our general diet recently, and historically have been an important protien for peasants because of there protein content![https://hodmedods.co.uk/blogs/news/what-are-fava-beans-are-they-just-broad-beans] according to hodmedods fava beans are "delicious, nutritious and good for the soil and bees. split fava beans are especially versatile and easy to cook as they don’t need soaking."[https://hodmedods.co.uk/pages/the-hodmedod-story] i think calling a dried bean delicious is a bit of a stretch to be honest, but fava beans are acctually quite good, and cheap if buying dried, i made some hummus for my mum (who has a chickpea allergy) from fava beans and it was actually amazing, and rice and peas with fava beans in place of kidney beans, which was pretty good, so i would say don't listen to the haters to be honest.
whatever you think about the fava bean there is no argument that hodmedod's didn't get the sauce spot on. trying a bit cold from the tin the sauce is definitly up there with if not the best on this list so far. inspite of it's slightly thin and too brown appearance it has to be the richest and rounded sauce of the lot, most likely due to the very smart addition of concentrated lemon juice, which adds the acidity that many of the other sauces miss and is something i add myself to my beans somtimes other than the addition of lemon juice the ingredient list doesn't give us a lot to deduce, with it tasting so similar to heinz its easy to see why they want to keep it a secret.
when cooked the sauce retians the same rich and rounded flavour profile, but the sauce is very liquidy, i managed to thicken it enough by cooking, letting cool a little bit in the pan with the lid on, and then reheating before plating on three (small) slices of morrisons best ancient grain loaf. even though i had cooked it for quite a long time (while my hash browns cooked) the beans were still quite hard, which is something there is a few complaints about in the beans review section:"Disappointed with these beans - watery sauce and hard beans. Love Hodmedod’s products usually and think you need to put in some hard work on producing something less insipid and less watery"[https://hodmedods.co.uk/products/baked-british-beans?_pos=1&_sid=571c80cf0&_ss=r] but for me i don't mind the hardness of the beans, infact i prefer it to the mushyness of most haricot based market options. how does the fava bean compare to the haricot bean as the baked bean? the fava bean stands up quite well, its difference to the haricot bean adds a more savoury aspect to the flavour of the baked beans. like with most fave bean products or dishes its kind of hard to say whether or not its better than the alternative, it tends to either be a decent, similar replacement, or something different like it is here, that personally i am big fan of.
big up the fava bean!
ingredients:haricot beans 53%, tomatoe puree 24%, water, sugar, modified maize starch, salt, onion powder, paprika, rapeseedoil, clove extract, cinnamon extract, paprika extract, flavouring, capsicum extract, garlic oil