This Simple Pizza-Inspired Bean Dish Makes Dinner Now And Lunches Later

Beans come in countless varieties, making them one of the most versatile and utilized staples worldwide. Canned beans take the overnight soak and hours long boil out of the equation, and the selection of canned beans at any grocery store is quite diverse. We've got over 20 recipes that start with a can of beans. And a simple, 3-ingredient pizza-inspired bean dish should be added to that list.

To make pizza-inspired beans, empty a couple of cans of your favorite beans into a casserole dish, add a jar of pasta or pizza sauce, and stir to combine. Top the saucy beans with a generous coating of shredded cheese and slide the casserole into the oven to bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for around 20 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbly. The versatile savoriness of beans will pair seamlessly with the classic pizza combo of sauce and cheese while bringing a hearty, protein-packed foundation.

While beans and pizza might sound like an unlikely duo, beans are a favorite ingredient in Italian cuisine, often combined with the same ingredients that make up a typical pizza recipe — tomato sauce, herbs, and cheese. In fact, we add white beans to pizza for a protein boost by turning them into pizza sauce. Pasta e fagioli contains tomato paste, fresh herbs, parmesan, and pancetta, all overlapping with the flavors and toppings you might top your pizza with.

Just like pizza, this quick and easy bean casserole is completely customizable and you can add as many toppings as you want. If you're looking for a delicious pizza sauce, we ranked pizza sauce brands and Rao's was our favorite. You can even switch up or augment the types of cheese you top your beans with by adding a sprinkling of fresh parmesan or dollops of creamy ricotta.

The type of canned beans you use can also inform topping combinations. Creamy white beans like butter beans or cannellini beans are the most obvious choice for a plain cheese pizza bean casserole, but you can bring savory spices with Italian sausage crumbles or pepperoni. Black beans are a popular topping on Mexican pizzas, so a pizza casserole could be topped with canned corn, bell peppers, red onions, and black olives. We think that baked beans are the unexpected topping your pizzas need, so why not reverse the roles and make baked beans the foundation for a Hawaiian-inspired pizza dish to top with Canadian bacon and pineapple? If you want to bring a gourmet touch, you can top the casserole with arugula and a drizzle of nice extra virgin olive oil, lemon zest, and lemon juice. You can make an ode to the Italian flag by topping your bean and pizza casserole with lines of pesto and vodka sauce.