20 Kidney Bean Recipes That Are as Easy as Grabbing Your Can Opener

This recipe has all the good stuff—vegetables, beans, pasta and cheese—but for a bit of freshness, we add a spoonful of pesto to each bowl.

With many homemade veggie burgers, you have to bust out your food processor, but this one comes together entirely by hand.

Serve it as a side dish with enchiladas or tacos, or eat it with a side of greens as a meal and call it a day.

There’s a lot going on here, and that’s definitely not a bad thing, because it means you can substitute ingredients at your leisure.

Any dried pasta will work, but we like how the beans can hide in the folds of orecchiette.

Unless you’re an Ohioan, you’ve probably never heard of serving chili on top of spaghetti. Trust us, it’s worth trying.

If you start with canned beans, it’ll be ready in under an hour.

This spicy dish is traditionally made with black urad dal lentils (which you can find online) and red kidney beans. Don’t forget a side of naan.

Make a big batch, store it in the fridge and you’ll have lunch for days. Put an egg on it to make it even more filling.

You can use pretty much any bean in a chili recipe, but kidney beans hold up beautifully to the long, slow cooking time.

Creamy beans, nutty quinoa, peppery arugula…what more could you ask for?

It’s somehow crunchy and creamy at the same time (which is only enhanced by pita chips for dipping).

Dump a few cans into a pot and you’re halfway to dinner. Easy, right?

Its name translates to pasta and beans, but we just call it delicious.

A 15-minute salad that gets better as it sits in the fridge? Sign us up.

Who needs chicken when you have beans? (Or cornbread biscuits, for that matter?)

If you haven’t noticed, we have a thing for chili. That’s only because it’s versatile and can been made a thousand different ways.

Aside from being best with a side of toast and a showering of Parm, this Italian soup is surprisingly nutritious, thanks to all those veggies.

Taco Tuesday has a nice ring to it, but 20-minute taco Tuesday sounds even better. Take that, carnitas.

You could, of course, make enchiladas without beans. But if you have a can laying around, why not add ’em?