Elevate Canned Baked Beans With This Bell Pepper Variety

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Opening a can of baked beans is way more convenient than making them from scratch, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't take a few additional moments to upgrade them with some extra ingredients. If you're into sweet and savory flavor pairings, you could add some canned pineapple or peaches (or even fresh peaches, if these juicy summer fruits are in season). If savory-on-savory is more your thing, though, Cape Crystal Brands food scientist Ed McCormick suggests using green bell peppers. McCormick — author of "Beginners Guide to Hydrocolloids: Understanding Food Thickening, Emulsification, Stabilizing, and Jellification" — recommended this addition to The Takeout, saying: "The fresh green pepper adds a brightness and crunch that offset the canned baked beans' sweetness and smokiness. It's also a new jolt of color."

Of course, you can also use yellow or red bell peppers, which are equally crunchy, although the color contrast will be less pronounced. They also have slightly different flavor profiles: Green peppers have more vegetal bitterness to them, while yellow peppers are sweeter, and the red ones are the sweetest of all. If you'd like a heat boost as well as a textural and visual one, you could always use a chile pepper like the fairly mild poblano or the more incendiary jalapeño. Still, the green bell pepper is likely to be the cheapest of these, so McCormick's favorite add-in may make for the most budget-friendly option for anyone who also doesn't want too much spice in their baked beans.

Even though dumping chopped fresh peppers straight into your baked beans would provide the most textural contrast, it wouldn't be optimal for flavor purposes. The flavor of raw green bell peppers is rather assertive, to the point where it might overpower the mild baked beans. Ed McCormick advised sauteing them first before stirring them into a pot of beans. "This mellows the pepper, releases its fragrance, and prevents a raw taste," he explains.

If you want to doctor your beans with some additional ingredients besides bell peppers, various flavor combos would also work. Try adding a dash of liquid smoke, Worcestershire sauce, or hot sauce, or stir in some ketchup or barbecue sauce if you like your beans on the sweet side. For super-sweet beans, you could even go with honey or maple syrup. In McCormick's opinion, though, the best mix-ins to go with green bell peppers are a trifecta of garlic, onions, and cider vinegar. "[They] complement the baked beans and peppers so well, providing a savory element to counter sweetness," he notes.