Eating Bean Sandwiches with a 7 Year Old

I do not like baked beans.

I don’t think this is a particularly controversial opinion, but it’s worth getting out there to begin with. Since our very first section of the List contains the unlikely (and I still have a hard time believing people eat this regularly) Baked Bean Sandwich, I thought it was probable that I was going to punish myself by trying one of these, even though a couple other people had already covered them.

Then, when I was at a nearby Irish market/butcher shop (Winston’s Market in Tinley Park, IL–I’d link you to their web site but I will be damned if I promote a site with music that autoplays) picking up HP sauce and back bacon for an attempt at a bacon butty (about which I’m still not quite ready to write, but soon hopefully) I saw some English-style baked beans (Heinz brand) in tomato sauce on the shelves.

Then down the shelf a bit I found an intriguing item I hadn’t already known about. Curried baked beans (Batchelors brand), which are apparently an Irish thing.

I knew both from reading about it previously and from Crit’s recent reminder, that English-style baked beans were different than what we got in America, and I suspected that I might like them more. Curried beans sounded better yet. But I figured I’d better get some of our USA style baked beans in there too and put all three of them head to head.

Today I went and picked up a can of Bush’s Country Style Baked Beans to complete the trio. England vs America vs Ireland.

I felt I might need a second opinion on a matter like this, and since the closest human being was my 7 year old son Ian I decided to ask him if he’d help. It went something like this:

me: Hey Ian, will you help me with an experiment?
Ian: sure!
me: it will involve eating sandwiches
Ian: OK!
me: they will be bean sandwiches
Ian: maaaaaaaybe not
me: it will make us fart….
Ian: <big giggles>
Ian: will it make us burp too?
me: it might, kiddo
Ian: <smiles wide>
Ian: beans give me FART POWER
Ian: can I have a glass of milk?
me: Sure

I let him run around while I prepared the sandwiches. I put around 3 heaping tablespoons of each type of beans into its own bowl and heated them in the microwave. I had a loaf of wide sourdough bread that I thought would work pretty well for this purpose. I quartered 2 slices of bread & used the smaller pieces to make sandwiches of all 3 types of beans.

Rather than doing each sandwich exactly the same, I wanted to give each version of baked beans the condiments it needed to shine. Not to go overboard, like say putting bacon in a sandwich–that would be unfair (though the US baked beans have some bacon flavor already). But regardless of wanting to be as fair as possible, I decided this comparison was more subjective than scientific so I wanted to present each option at its best.

For the Bush’s Country Style Baked Beans I went with a basic version of what’s described on the Wikipedia page: I buttered the bottom piece of untoasted bread, put mayonnaise & lettuce on top with the beans between.

For the Heinz beans, I thought of the classic English comfort food of baked beans on toast and went for that type of simplicity. I lightly toasted and buttered the bread, added the beans and that was it.

For the Batchelor’s curried beans, it amused me to treat Irish curry flavor, which is essentially borrowed from British curry–itself borrowed/invented to approximate the aromatic dishes of colonial India–as more authentic than it deserved by making a Pakistani style raita sauce similar to one I remember from a “cabbie joint” I used to frequent in River North.

Most raitas are more salad-like and contain vegetables or fruits, but this is a more condiment-like raita consisting of yogurt, fresh coarsely-ground black pepper & cumin seed, and salt. I complicated it just a tad by adding pinches of asafoetida & white pepper, but it was still a relatively simple condiment. I again did not toast the bread–I buttered the bottom slice and spread the raita on top.

I let Ian decide which sandwich he wanted to try first. He picked the Bush’s Country Style Baked Beans. He liked it. “Even with the lettuce?” I asked–he usually doesn’t like to eat things that are green, especially if the green bits are all mixed in with the rest of the food. He nodded.

I had bites of each sandwich along with Ian and was surprised by this version, which I thought I would hate (much like Andrew). I think that the mayo and lettuce are what saved it from being an inedible mess but it was definitely much better than I expected. Very sweet but the slight bitterness of the lettuce helped there, and with the mayo kept the beans and soft bread from being so much mush.

Next he chose the English beans. “Not too bad, not too good either,” he says. “A bit boring?” I asked. “Yeah.”

The British baked beans in tomato sauce were a little bland, I thought. I’d like the tomato flavor to be brighter/more acidic. But the fact that the bread was toasted gave this sandwich an edge, and as I finished chewing I got a nice taste of the butter, melted and absorbed by the warm toast. I can see why this is comfort food to the Brits.

We finished with the Irish curried beans. “This one’s a bit spicy,” he said, and immediately reached for his glass of milk. He might have bit into a big chunk of black peppercorn from the raita. He really has zero tolerance for spice though, so he might just not have liked the beans.

These were my favorite. It may not quite be fair, since I invested a bit more time in this sandwich by making a homemade condiment, but even plain I liked these beans the best, with the mild curry powder flavor adding a necessary extra element to what is in essence the exact same thing as the English baked beans.

I reviewed the sandwiches with him again and he had a clear favorite–the Bush’s Country Style Baked Beans sandwich with lettuce and mayo. “But I’d rather just have the beans, not in a sandwich,” he clarified, so I gave him the rest of the bowl to eat while I pondered. After the two of us had tried the sandwiches, there was no clear winner. I needed a third opinion so I asked Mindy, my wife, to try them, hoping she’d be the tiebreaker.

Mindy came into the kitchen and silently tried the sandwiches in this order
Irish
English
American

She liked the English best. I asked why, whether she thought it was a textural thing since that’s the only one w/ toasted bread, or if she just liked the taste of those beans best. “I liked those beans the best,” she replied. She took a clean spoon and tasted the beans plain out of the can. “I don’t think they’re the kind of thing I’d eat on their own though.”

Three different people tried three different sandwiches and each sandwich got one vote. I was going to have to bring in the teenagers. They were across the street playing D&D but were expected home soon for dinner.

My two older sons are both in high school. Damian is 16 and will eat just about anything. Max is 14 and a bit pickier, but still game to try most new foods as long as they aren’t too spicy. When they arrived home shortly thereafter, they seemed a bit suspicious to find me waiting for them with my cameraphone ready.

I recruited them to the cause by telling them they could eat dinner after they tried my sandwiches. The sandwiches were lined up with the Irish beans on the left, the English beans in the middle, and the US beans on the far right (no pun intended). Damian started with the American beans and worked his way left, while Max started with the Irish beans and worked his way right. Neither offered any commentary while they were eating.

When they were done, I asked them which sandwiches they liked the best. Damian’s favorite was the Bush’s Country-style baked beans. Max surprised me by liking the Batchelors curried beans the best. I asked each of them why they chose the sandwich they did.

Damian said, “I guess with the mayo and lettuce it just seemed like the most complete sandwich. The other two were just beans & bread. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I could eat beans & bread all day.”

Max said, “I just liked the flavor the best.” The flavor of the beans? “Yeah, the curried flavor was the most interesting.” This from the kid who won’t eat Indian food to save his life, but I guess Irish curry really is quite mild.

So after a highly scientific poll of 5 experienced eaters, the current tally is:

• Bush’s baked beans with lettuce and mayo on untoasted sourdough bread: 2 votes
• Batchelors curried beans with Pakistani raita on untoasted sourdough bread: 2 votes
• Heinz baked beans in tomato sauce on buttered, lightly toasted sourdough bread: 1 vote

I tried to get the neighbor kid to add another vote but he just smelled one of the sandwiches and said, “Nope.”

So I’d like to be able to tell you that we learned something important today, but we really didn’t. We ate some beans and bread and that’s about it. But Ian is quite ready to declare a winner. He says that the sandwich with Bush’s baked beans is “the holy fart sandwich of the fart tribe.” Which is a pretty impressive title to a 7 year old.