Pack Canned Baked Beans With Flavor By Adding This Chinese Sauce

In the world of shelf-stable foods, baked beans can be hit or miss depending on the quality of the product inside the can and your personal preferences. Some blends skew too sweet, while others may simply be fairly bland. That's why it's important to have an arsenal of tasty, easily accessible flavor bombs that you can use to zhuzh up lackluster bean blends, such as loading baked beans up with canned Spam, or (even better) throwing in a few tablespoons of the soy sauce that's probably already in your kitchen.

Soy sauce is a delicious addition to baked beans of most styles because it not only adds salt, but also a beautiful dose of umami that can help balance and enhance flavors already present in the beans. That's because under the hit of sodium is a nutty, earthy funk from the fermentation process that transforms sugary sweetness into a lovely barbecued flavor. It adds complexity to the tomato-based sauce, and can even tame overly spicy or smoky beans by gently pushing these intense flavors into the background.

The best way to add soy sauce to any style of baked beans is to warm the beans, give them a taste, and then add the soy sauce about ½ tablespoon at a time. Stir and taste until you reach the balance you want, then simmer until hot. This technique prevents you from adding too much soy sauce, as you can always add more, but you can't take out what's been mixed in.

Though adding soy sauce alone may be enough to take mediocre canned baked beans to the next level, there are lots of East and Southeast Asian flavors you can stir in that pair beautifully with both soy sauce and tomatoey beans. You may not think of baked beans when you picture food from the region, but legumes feature prominently in many Asian cuisines, as do sweet and savory combinations, so there's lots of fun overlap to experiment with.

For instance, there are several unexpected uses for Chinese five spice, and this could be one of them. Featuring the warm, zingy flavors of cinnamon, cloves, star anise, fennel, and peppercorns (the eponymous five spices), this blend is the perfect addition to soy sauce-laden baked beans. Each of these spices mingles perfectly with sweet flavors like molasses and brown sugar, which are common in baked bean recipes. They're also delicious with acidic tomato sauce and salty soy, quickly and easily taking this dish into East Asian-style barbecue territory.

If you're a big fan of pad Thai, it's pretty easy to infuse baked beans with the same flavors using a simple three-ingredient peanut sauce that combines hoisin sauce (which contains soy sauce) with peanut butter and rice wine vinegar. Stirred into baked beans, this adds the perfect balance of creamy texture and salty acid. Though baked beans are often eaten solo, these additions make them delicious served over fluffy white rice or flat rice noodles for a satisfying meal.