What do YOU use these for?

A couple of weeks ago I was in my local Co-Operative store and asked if they had "garlic butter". The woman looked at me like I was crazy. Yeah, Peter Kay's dad would have been proud of her.

Fast forward to last weekend and I had decided to go vegetarian for a week to see if it helped me lose weight (lasted until yesterday and this doner chicken recipe) so I found a recipe for sweet potato and cannellini bean burgers.

I was surprised to see the same Co-Op selling cannellini beans, next tot he kidney beans etc.

So what do people use them for? I'm assuming they must be fairly popular or the Co-Op wouldn't be carrying them, but, bean burgers aside, all I can think of is home made baked beans and the tins of cannellini beans are about three times the price of a tin of baked beans.

Is there some traditional British recipe I'm over-looking here?

I use them in a recipe with pork. They are cooked with white wine, stock and cream. Lovely.

I use them as general beans along with pinto, haricot and kidney. So in chilli con carne, stews, soups and cassoulet. They are also used in salads, but not by me

They make a really good pasta sauce if you lightly sautee them with some onion and garlic, seasoning etc and then add some water and lemon juice and leave to simmer. They break down and become like a creamy sauce.

I use them in 5-bean chilli.

I keep a collection of tinned beans, including cannellini, in the cupboard and use them to pad out curries, home made soups and stews

I don't have particular recipes for each one but just use them interchangeably

Oh, gonna try that pasta sauce idea for sure.

Same here. Sometimes you want to add filler to a recipe and you could use baked beans but sometimes you don't want the tomato sauce so other alternatives are handy to have in the cupboard.

Same here.

I use them as an accompaniment to curry heated in a tomato-ey curried sauce.

Chorizo, fish, beans & spinach. Similar to this dish.
http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/s...e-beans-greens

Home made Baked Beans - pate - burgers - curry - soup and to thicken thin soups.

I make a quick "mash" with them.

I use them cold in a salad (taste lovely with just salt, lemon juice and olive oil), goes particularly well with tuna or warm with garlic and herbs to accompany fish.

I use them a lot from soups to chocolate cake. They are very versatile.

I often use them as a warm salad base. This is the general pattern, can be varied in a number of ways

Start with some halved cherry tomatoes and chopped onion in a bowl.

Fry some diced chorizo in olive oil until it starts to crisp and release its own oil.
Add the cannellini beans to the pan, mix and let them warm through.
Stir in some sherry vinegar.

Add to the tomato and onions in the bowl, season and mix well.

I love cannelini beans. As a student living away from home, I find the most important things I buy in my weekly shop are tins of the following:

chickpeas
cannelini beans
baked beans
passata
chopped tomatoes

All of these are just so versatile, tasty and nutritious, plus it's so easy to cook with them and vary recipes to include them. Oh, and at about 25p per can from most supermarkets, they are amazing value for money too.

Going by a woman at work (who seems to eat them daily) they are used to generate very potent farts.

I use Cannelloni beans in Tuscan vegetarian Sausage Casseroles.

Pity you didn't last the week eating vegetarian food but being a veggie doesn't guarantee weight loss. Only food poisoning and a sugar free diet do that

Cannelloni are delicious, nutritious, and very versatile as previous posts suggest!

Along with chick peas, rinsed baked beans and defrosted peas, I put them in salads.......obviously only one of those examples at a time.

I always toss my salads with olive oil and a mixture of lemon and lime juice in equal parts and find that much nicer than vinegar. Its worth a try.

I'm trying to cut back on the amount of meat I eat so I find them useful for bulking out veggie chillis and casseroles.

Where do you shop? They're at least double that price everywhere I go.

Not seen them for 25p but ASDA do tins for 38p and Tesco have an offer on for 3 for £1

Thanks. No Asda within miles of me, though.