Bean stew with a luxurious cheese topping is the perfect dinner meal or a side dish. Serve this stew with fresh parsley and toasted bread to bring out all the flavours. You can also incorporate loads of different vegetables without even tasting them… perfect for fussy eaters.
Creating a tasty vegetarian dish in my home is a real challenge. Every time I try, my attempts are quashed by my husband’s remark: ‘Emm… babe… you forgot to add meat’. Well, you know me – I’m taking this as a challenge! I had to create something so tasty that even he wouldn’t even think about meat. And I did it!
This delicious bean stew with cheese combines three of the best ingredients: tomatoes, beans and cheese.
Put them all together and place them under the grill to get all the bubbly and amazing cheesiness. Heaven! Dip toasted bread into the stew or serve it as a side dish with your dinner meal.
So sorry, if you’re still thinking you need meat in this dish… you need to think again. I promise you – just try it out and it’ll be your favourite meal for those meat-free days.
Ingredients for Bean Stew with Cheese Topping
This delicious bean stew with cheese recipe requires less than 10 ingredients. Actually, you can make it just with 6 if you’re struggling to find all the products. It’s still going to be amazing!
- Carrots
- Leek
- Garlic
- Tinned tomatoes – use very fragrant and delicious tomatoes. The best you can find are San Marzano tomatoes (shopping link).
- Tinned butter beans
- Tinned cannellini beans
- Emmental cheese – perfect for melting.
- Scamorza cheese – this cheese is like smoked mozzarella, but with a firmer texture and slightly different taste notes.
- Parsley
Also, feel free to add different ingredients to your tomato sauce. Mushrooms, celery, broccoli (the list goes on)would all work perfectly!
Bean Stew with Cheese Topping Recipe Swaps
I love simple and easy recipes. However, I’m a firm believer that if you play with different ingredients, you can create the best textures and favour combinations. Therefore, I chose two types of cheese and beans. Just to give the recipe a bit of a spin!
- Beans – I used two types of beans (butter and cannellini), however, feel free to use the same type of beans or swap them for chickpeas, red kidney or haricot beans.
- Cheese – you need a cheese that’s perfect for melting and Emmental is my go-to choice. If you don’t have it, you can use simple cheddar, mozzarella, swiss or gruyere cheese. As long as it melts – you’re good to go.
- Tinned tomato is the place you can improvise and go crazy. If you have fresh, fragrant and delicious tomatoes you can use them instead of the tinned option.
- Additional ingredients – if you want to use a wider variety of vegetables, you can tuck them into the tomato sauce, and nobody will ever know. I love adding mushrooms, broccoli stalks or zucchini. In this case, I just blend the sauce in a blender (to cover my tracks!) before mixing with the beans.
Check out these incredible recipes with delicious tomato sauce:
Baked Halloumi with Tomato Sauce
Homemade Pasta with Roasted Tomato Sauce
Spaghetti with Lentils and Tomato Sauce
Spaghetti with Homemade Tomato Sauce
Recipe
Ingredients
Tomato sauce:
2 carrots
½ leek
2 garlic cloves
1 tin of tomatoes
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
Bean layer:
1 tin of butter beans
1 tin of cannellini beans
100g Emmental cheese
50g Scamorza cheese
Fresh parsley
Method
Prepare the Tomato Sauce:
- Cut all the veggies into small pieces. Add them to a saucepan with a good glug of olive oil, salt and pepper.
- Cook the veggies for 5 minutes until they get soft.
- Add the tinned tomatoes with a glass of water to the cooked veggies and simmer everything for 20-30 minutes.
- Season to your liking.
Prepare the Bean Stew:
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
- Mix the beans with the tomato sauce and add them to the baking dish.
- Grate the cheese on top.
- Bake the stew in the oven for 20-30 minutes.
- Serve the dish with fresh parsley and toasted bread.
