Long Misunderstood, Baked Beans Are Busting Loose

Baked beans are entering new territories and legume lovers are torn.

Take pizza, for example. Kraft Heinz began selling frozen pizza topped with baked beans in the U.K. last year, bringing back a limited edition offering from 2002.

“Beans on pizza is worse than pineapple,” one critic posted on social media in response to Heinz’s announcement. Others gushed. “Omg, baked beans pizza is back?!?!?! I’ve wanted this to come back for years!!!”

The pizza, says Heinz, is part of its Beanz Liberation campaign to free beans from the can. Other efforts include stuffing baked beans into frozen hash brown potatoes and combining baked beans with parsnips, carrot and spices to form curry-flavored nuggets, currently available in the U.K.

“There is a real demand for baked bean innovations,” says Caio Fontenele, New Ventures Director for Kraft Heinz Northern Europe.

In the U.S., the acknowledged birthplace of commercially canned baked beans, baked beans remain in the can but long-time producers and upstarts are spicing things up, adding bourbon flavor, Dr Pepper, apricots and jalapeños.

“It’s been seen as a humble food forever and now it’s having its moment in the sun,” says Kat Kavner who experimented in her kitchen during the pandemic, adding fruit to baked beans. Cherry bombed. It felt too heavy. Apricot, however, was bright and tangy, says Kavner, co-founder of Heyday Canning lineup, which sells Apricot Glazed baked beans along with Kimchi Sesame navy beans.

Baked beans have a lot going for them. They’re plant-based, high in protein, convenient, relatively cheap and have a long shelf life.

Americans traditionally eat baked beans at picnics and barbecues. The British eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Baked beans long lacked variety and tasted largely the same through the years, although that is changing as bean makers woo younger eaters interested in spicy, ethnic dishes. Serious Bean, which makes several canned bean products, suggests using its Dr Pepper- flavored baked beans when making coconut curry chicken. “There’s a place for beans in everything,” says co-founder Trey Taylor.

Another image issue: the “beans, beans the magical fruit” chant that made baked beans, and their fans, the butt of jokes.

That, too, is changing. Bush Brothers & Co., one of largest baked bean makers in the U.S., heard that singer Josh Groban loved legumes and asked him to come up with an alternative baked bean ballad.

The company “wanted a song that would pay appropriate tribute to beans and maybe right the wrongs done through all the other poems,” says Drew Everett, chairman and fourth generation of Bush family members.

Groban did, and included a verse addressing the childhood rhyme directly. “It’s not a fruit and the reason you toot is something called oligosaccharides!” referring to the sugar in beans that can create gas in your lower intestine. He also made a music video, with his dad making a cameo appearance. “For a schmancy affair or dad’s barbecue grillin’ /Or outta the can like a cowboy villain/ Here’s to beans Beautiful beans!”

Groban said on Facebook being asked to write and perform a full blown musical tribute to the magic of beans fulfilled “perhaps my greatest purpose.”

Bush Brothers, which calls itself That Beautiful Bean Company, overhauled its bean museum in Chestnut Hill, Tenn., where visitors can wander through the “Can Openers Through the Years” display, weigh themselves in beans and access recipes for dozens of varieties, including new higher-end baked beans, one with chipotle sauce and another with bourbon flavor.

People are passionate about baked beans and how to eat them. The British canned version tends to have beans in a thinner tomato sauce, which is popular on toast for breakfast. Americans favor a sweet, brown sugar flavor at cookouts. They engage in a baked bean brouhaha on social media.

“What is with American hostility towards baked beans on toast?” asked one Reddit user in a no stupid question forum, which generated close to 500 responses, including one saying they wouldn’t judge food combinations after seeing a co-worker mix a cherry Kool-Aid packet with a brick of dry Ramen noodles.

“I guess to make a comparison, it would be like…ketchup on a tortilla?”

“I once had beans on toast for Christmas dinner. Best Christmas ever,” a fan wrote on another forum debating the merits of beans on toast.

“This discussion is not going away,” says Christina Conte, a Scottish-Italian cook living in Los Angeles and a World Porridge Champion. Growing up in Scotland, she ate beans on toast for breakfast, lunch or dinner sometimes and still does. Americans don’t know how delicious the snack is or how to even make it, she says, often insisting on making baked beans from scratch when the authentic British approach calls for canned baked beans.

Her simple three-step recipe, posted on Christina’s Cucina, a food and travel website, prompted a surprising number of questions about the type of bread to use, whether to add an egg and cheese, or butter the toast.

Baked beans are misunderstood, says Meg Muckenhoupt, author of “The Truth About Baked Beans,” which debunks the myth that Pilgrims learned how to make baked beans with maple syrup and bear fat from Native Americans. Muckenhoupt, who also wrote “Cabbage, A Global History,” says canned beans aren’t baked, but boiled or steamed, and New Englanders adopted, rather than created the dish.

Barry Kirk, of Port Talbot, Wales, who changed his name to Captain Beany, operated a baked bean museum in his flat. A huge baked bean fan, on his 60th birthday he had 60 baked beans tattooed on his head to raise money for a local charity. He says he prefers his baked beans on toast, but likes them on pizza, too.

Captain Beany, 69, closed his museum earlier this year because his flat was being remodeled. He donated his baked bean memorabilia to another museum, but kept his custom-made coffin, covered with baked beans images and inscribed with “R.I.B Captain Beany Bean There! Done That!”

Write to Clare Ansberry at clare.ansberry@wsj.com