Tinned butter beans

How long it keeps

About 24 months unopened

Once opened, about 2 days, refrigerated.

Source (unopened): FoodKeeper (USDA), 372 Canned goods, low acid (such as meat, poultry, fish, gravy, stew, soups, beans, carrots, corn, pasta, peas, potatoes, spinach), 2–5 Years · https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/fsis-foodkeeper-data

Source (once opened): https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/how-to-chill-freeze-and-defrost-food-safely/how-to-chill-freeze-and-defrost-food-safely

What ends it. The food and the tin slowly react. That changes taste and texture rather than making it unsafe. How to make it last longer

Can you eat tinned butter beans straight from the tin?

Yes. Tinned beans are cooked in the can, which is the whole point of them, so they need warming only if you want them warm. Drain and rinse them for a salad, or tip the lot, liquid included, into a stew, where the starchy liquid thickens the sauce for free.

They are the best tinned bean for eating as the main event rather than a bulker: big, creamy and soft enough to crush with a fork. They take a slow sauce well, as in butter beans in tomato and oregano and barbecue butter beans, and hold their shape well enough to stand in a dressing, as in tuna and butter bean salad.

How long they keep

USDA FoodKeeper puts low-acid tins like these at two to five years; we plan on the low end. Once open they are ordinary cooked food, and the Food Standards Agency says not to keep food in an opened tin: decant what is left into a covered container (FSA). In the fridge, eat it within two days. Without one, open a tin only when you will finish it.

What they give you

Per 100 g drained, CoFID records 77 kcal and 5.9 g of protein, and gives sodium as zero. Some tins are packed in salted water, so the label is the authority on salt for the tin in your hand.

Storage

Cool, dark. The best tinned bean for eating as the main event rather than a bulker.

The pack

Typical UK size: 400 g
Weight packed: 448 g
Volume: 470 ml

Computed from net weight and standard pack geometry, not weighed. Manufacturers publish net weight and nobody publishes packed weight or displaced volume, so this is an estimate and is labelled as one.

Per 100 g

Deliberately narrow. These are the five things a long-life diet actually gets wrong, plus energy and protein. It is not a general nutrition model and is not meant to be.

Energy: 77 kcal
Protein: 5.9 g
Fibre: not measured
Vitamin C: 0 mg
Vitamin A: 0 µg
Omega-3: not measured
Sodium: 0 mg

Source: CoFID 2021: 13-559 Beans, butter, canned, re-heated, drained