Delicious brothy homemade white beans. Infused with garlic and herbs, the flavorful broth is good to the last drop! Baking beans in the oven makes for easy, hands off cooking. Meal prep these beans for healthy, protein packed meals throughout the week. These white beans are delicious on their own, served with crusty bread, or added to soups and grain bowls.

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Dutch over with beans, garlic, rosemany shallots and other ingredients

These days we’re really leaning into cozy comfort foods - and these brothy oven baked beans certainly fit the bill. They’re as versatile as can be: eat the beans and the garlicky broth as is (or with a side of grilled bread, for dipping), use it as a base for soups/stews, or add a scoop of beans to bowls, salads, toast, anything you want really. And while cooking beans from scratch does take some time, this method lets you pop them in the oven for a completely hands-off cooking approach. It truly is the best of both worlds.

Given everyone seems to have been hunkered down at home for months now, we weren’t really sure how excited anyone would be about something as humble as a dried bean. But it turns out, the excitement is real. After a simple photo of beans from our weekend meal prep, we’re stunned by how many of you were literally begging for the recipe! So without further adieu, here’s how to make our brothy oven baked beans.

The recipe starts with an overnight soak for dried navy beans. If you prefer to go with another white bean, like cannellini, go ahead! After soaking, you’ll simply rinse and strain the beans and toss them into a pot with your favorite veggie stock and a handful of delicious herbs and aromatics. Shut the lid and pop everything in the oven. You can cook beans on the stove, but we love the oven baked method because you don’t need to keep an eye on a bubbling pot for hours. Our method means you literally “set it and forget it”...until your timer goes off to tell you that your delicious beans are ready!

Close up of beans being cooked down in a dutch oven with spoon stirring

This is a recipe that really benefits from starting with good ingredients, so pick your favorite veggie stock (ours right now is Better than Bouillon, but use what you love). If you don’t have shallots, feel free to skip them. Don’t skip the garlic, because nobody regrets roasted garlic. Two heads of garlic might seem like a lot, but it’s what we feel is the perfect amount for this recipe - and we are cooking up a lot of beans, after all. We won’t get upset if it’s desperate times and you can only scrounge up one head of garlic...but if you’re completely out, we’d suggest waiting until you’re fully stocked before making this for the first time (that way, you’ll know what you’re missing!). Thyme, if you haven’t noticed, is one of our favorite herbs, and definitely worth buying for this recipe, if you don’t already have it on hand.

Another thing we love about this dish is that both the beans AND the garlicky broth make for many delicious, versatile meals. You can eat them on their own, as we often do. You can toast / grill up bread to serve on the side for dipping. If you’re feeling up to it, you can toss in whatever greens you have on hand (kale, spinach, bitter greens, are all great contenders). We sometimes like to serve ours with crumbled feta and a jammy egg on the side for variety. Sometimes we use the beans and broth as the base of a soup (adding in small cooked pasta noodles and other veggies); or they can be served on top of rice. Extras can be frozen if you feel like you have too many to get through in the week, but we have yet to have that happen!