Fuelled by a wave of social media trends including ‘fibre-maxxing’ and protein packing, the everyday butter bean is no longer just a budget fallback sitting in a dusty corner of the pantry. Gourmet jars featuring heirloom varieties like Spanish gigantes or creamy judión beans are filling supermarket shelves and winning over home cooks, despite costing as much as ten times the price of a standard 45p tin. Clearly, the gap between basic and best has never been wider.
I tasted eighteen popular butter beans in a range of formats and have concluded that whether you should opt for a cheap and cheerful can or a posh jar entirely comes down to how you plan to use them.
The premium beans proved to be leagues ahead in texture and flavour, but are far too delicious for throwing into soups or stews and are best kept for tossing into salads, whizzing into creamy dips or eating straight from the jar with a swirl of good olive oil. Standard tinned beans (especially unsalted ones) are pretty dull on their own, but at such great value and with all the same health benefits, they’re brilliant for bulking out cassoulets and curries where bigger flavours do the heavy lifting.
So, in search of the perfect bean, I spent some time testing the high street’s offerings – from basic to premium. Here are the results.
