Canned Baked Beans Are 10x Better With This Cooked Vegetable

We can all agree that canned goods make our lives — and our meals — much easier. Shelf-stable (most canned soups are safe to eat for up to five years), easy to crack open, especially if they have a pull-tab top, and typically quite delicious, food that comes in cans is something for which we should all be grateful. Canned baked beans, in particular, tend to be a sweet and savory treat, and we can thank the Heinz company for being the first to produce them and for taking all the work out of making them. However, they might not contain the same depth of flavor that homemade baked beans have, but for that, there's an easy fix that will make them 10 times better: adding caramelized onions.

Caramelized onions are a rich, flavorful addition to any dish, but they work especially well here because, like baked beans, they are at once savory and sweet, and their soft jamminess complements the tender, stew-like texture of the beans. It's true that caramelizing onions is a labor of love, one that should take you at least 45 minutes to do properly (though you can use Ina Garten's pro-tip for making them more quickly). But if you have the time and you need an easy side for home or a potluck, it's well worth the effort. After cooking your onions, simply decant the can of beans into your pot to warm them — voilà! A delicious side that will taste homemade.

Caramelized onions are just one example of how adding something simple and easy to prepare can really amp up your baked beans, which just so happen to come from a can (not that anyone will be able to tell after you're done zhuzhing them up). For other produce-forward ideas, try tossing in some pineapple for sweetness (if it turns out too sweet, balance it with some hot mustard or a dash of your favorite vinegar) or chopped jalapeños for spice, or both if you like. They'd be even better if you could grill them before adding to the beans because the heat helps caramelize the former and imparts a deliciously smoky richness to the latter.

And because it makes literally every dish better, you might also add bacon into the mix. Even if your beans already contain bacon, it's no doubt the soft, tender kind. We suggest mixing in chopped up strips that have been cooked to a crisp, so this otherwise soft side gains a little texture, to say nothing of the decadent, smoky, and savory flavor that this pork product adds.

Of course, it's not just about what you fold into the beans; it's also about how you heat them. While warming them on the stove is definitely the easiest method, beans and all their trappings certainly benefit from a bake in the oven. Even if you just pour the ingredients into a casserole dish and pop it under the broiler for a few minutes, that sauce will get nice and bubbly and even browned, which means more flavor.