Beans on Toast - A Random Rant
When we were still based in Singapore, I would ask Mitch what he wanted for lunch and the same answer came just as it (almost) always did: beans on toast.
Beans. On. Toast.
What is up with that? Canned beans on top of bread - and that is supposedly considered a full meal. It's basically carbs on carbs, on carbs.
When we first got together, I was really looking forward to dazzling him with my culinary skills from the Youtube Academy of Online Baking and Cooking Videos but this guy just wants beans on toast! (I swear my cooking isn't THAT bad).
Eventually, my curiosity as to how this weird combination came about got the better of me and I did some googling.
Apparently, Heinz UK (they also make the ketchup that you probably love) has been making baked beans since the 1920s. This was about two years after the first World War ended so food rationing was still in place. At that time, a lot of people can only afford to buy canned beans and a loaf of bread. And because the combination was nutritious, convenient and filling, it actually stuck and now beans on toast is the go-to-meal for most brits.
So to those curious as to how this "complicated" recipe goes, lemme break it down for ya:
- Toast your bread
- Heat up your beans (I do mine on the microwave because #technology)
- Slather your bread with butter
- Dump all the beans on top of the bread
One thing to take note, don't heat it up too long as the beans tend to explode – I AM NOT KIDDING. Not all just maybe like 4 or 5 exploded when I heated it up to 3 minutes. You can actually hear some of the beans popping and then you’re left with some empty-looking sad beans and you have to wipe your microwave clean again.
So there you go. Beans on toast - a beloved meal by the Brits.
I don't think baked beans in a thing in here in Japan though because it's not something you see on the shelves of even the biggest supermarkets (except CostCo but that's quite far from our place).
Luckily, Amazon Japan sells just about everything so even here, and although it's quite pricey compared to what we were used to - he still gets his BOT cravings satisfied.
