Even if you love cooking with fresh ingredients and making things from scratch, we can’t deny that canned foods come in handy. We often have a selection of canned products in our kitchen cabinets for a rainy day. These are the foods you call upon when you’re feeling lazy or need something quick to cook. But, what if you took your canned foods and used them to create awesome dishes? Some of the most common items in your cupboard could be taken to the next level if you knew how. Today, you’ll find three different canned food ideas.
Baked beans
Many of us have cans of baked beans in their kitchen. There’s nothing wrong with beans on toast or beans on a baked potato. However, if you mix your beans with some extra ingredients, you can create a delicious masterpiece.
One idea is to get your beans and mix them with spices, onion, pepper, ketchup, brown sugar, molasses, mustard, and apple cider vinegar. When put together in a skillet in a smoker, you can create the most delicious smoked beans ever. In fact, if you like to learn how to make baked beans smoked, check out this site for the full recipe. It’s a really warming dish that can be combined with bacon or vegan bacon for added protein and served either on its own or with potatoes.
I also like to use these for chili.
Soup
You can take canned soup and use it as an ingredient in a more impressive meal, like stroganoff. Typically, this sauce is made from scratch using mushrooms, sour cream, mustard and other things. It can take a while to prepare, but one hack involves pouring in some cream of mushroom soup as the base for the sauce.
It has all the ingredients mixed together already, providing a creamy and flavorsome texture. There’s a good recipe here if you want to try it — and you can apply this hack to lots of different soups as well. If you ever need to thicken a sauce, adding some canned soup will do the trick as it’s pre-seasoned for you!
Pears
Canned pears are one of the best fruits to have in your kitchen cabinet. Peaches and apples are also really useful — and canned fruits are generally a smart way to help you get more fruit in your meals.
With pears, you have so many options at your disposal. One idea is to heat the pears in a pan with a touch of sugar or syrup. Really focus on softening them and getting a nice glaze on every piece. Then, you can add them to the top of your porridge or as a filling in a sweet pie. Such a simple way to take your canned pears and make them more useful.
The next time you’re looking for meal inspiration, open your kitchen cupboards and see what lies inside.
Marette Flora is the founder of Floradise blog and personalized gift shop. Marette is a passionate storyteller and creator. She attended the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University and obtained a bachelor’s degree in journalism and mass communication.
She is passionate about creating helpful and meaningful things.