Cheap Eats: White Bean Casserole

One of the things we frequently do on the weekends is cook a pound of some dry bean. In the summer we often cook lentils, chickpeas, or black beans but in the winter we usually cook some kind of white beans (navy, great northern etc.).

This past week S cooked a pound of Great Northern beans and used some of them for his white bean and collard soup. There were still a fair number of beans left (about half?) so we stuck them in the fridge for future use.

One cold rainy day, I pulled them out and made this:

White Bean Casserole

about 1/2 a pound of cooked white beans
one medium onion chopped
4-6 thick slices of bacon cut into strips cross-ways (basically I cut slices off of our piece of bacon and then cut across the slices to make 1/4 inch wide strips like lardons)
one and a half cups bread crumbs
half cup Parmesan

Fry the bacon and onion together until the bacon begins to crisp. Spoon out of the pan and stir into the beans. Try to leave as much grease as possible in the pan.Put the bean mixture into a casserole (I used a small, deep one). Sprinkle half the Parmesan on top.

Stir the bread crumbs into the hot bacon grease and brown slightly. Sprinkle on top on the casserole, then top with the remaining Parmesan. I did grind some pepper on top, but I didn’t add any salt to the recipe as the beans had been salted previously and our home-cured bacon is fairly salty.

Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes or until heated through and golden on top.

Serve with fruit salad, bread or toast.

This served the five of us with about a cup and a half left over which I used for soup the next day. Approximate cost of the dish was less than $5. It is a little low on protein but that could be bumped up by adding a little milk (about a 1/4 cup).

Linking over to Works For Me Wednesday.

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