This white bean cheese sauce is the cheese sauce I use the most often. I do like making a roux, it makes me feel kinda chef-y, but this cheesy sauce allows me to add white beans that are super healthy and boost the protein factor to high. The texture, the taste, the way you can use this sauce are all the same as with a more traditionally made cheese sauce, except the time element. That's reduced by 90%? Maybe more. Give this a go, I think you're going to love it!

White Bean Cheese Sauce

Beans, Legumes, whatever you know them by, they're cheap, they're available everywhere, canned or dried they last for an age in your pantry and they're mostly pretty tasteless. And while tasteless food isn't normally something to shout about, in this instance beans create the perfect base for a sauce and let other flavors take centre stage.

Cheesy sauces have been the backbone of a lot comfort food everywhere, forever. Many many people love cheese and I'm also a very big fan, as are my kids and so it stands to reason that if it's going to feature heavily in our world, I'm going to do everything I can to add extra nutrition where I can.

When we started Clean eating, some of the recipes I made the kids meant they needed to get used to new texture, new flavors. Not this. This is cheese sauce through and though. The kids taste cheese. They eat it. It's a kid 101.

Using Beans In Cheese Sauce

Using beans in a cheese sauce means you're adding a truck load of nutrients and goodness to something the kids know, love and most likely, already happily eat.

Why are beans so healthy? Well they're typically cholesterol free, and are high in:

Folate
Potassium
Iron
Magnesium
Both soluble and insoluble fibre
Protein

While beans do have a taste, it's generally mild and easily overpowered by a stronger flavor like cheese. I use a really string mature Cheddar cheese for this recipe as it means I use less of it and still get a really cheese flavor, but you can use any strength of cheese you like. In fact you can use any cheese that will melt, keeping the quantities the same.

Which Beans Can You Use?

For this I usually use cannellini beans. I have also used Haricot beans, which are usually used for baked beans and also work really well in this recipe. These are the two beans I'd recommend using, although you could try using butter beans as well. I've not used them for this, but I suspect the result would be the same.

I buy tinned beans, or Legumes, sim ply because they're so easy to use and don't need any of the soaking and preparing that dried beans do. Having a stock of tinned beans in the pantry means I can decide to use them in a recipe at the last minute, whereas with dried beans you've got to plan ahead a bit more than I usually do.

Dried beans are generally cheaper than tinned beans. That said, tinned beans are very inexpensive, and the small price difference is definitely worth it to me for the convenience. If you use dried beans for this, make sure to follow the pack instructions for soaking them before using them for this recipe.

Storing White Bean Cheese Sauce

While this is such a quick and easy cheese sauce and I mostly make it as and when I need it, you can also make this ahead and store it for when you want it.

If you want to store this, as soon as the sauce is ready, pour it into a clean jam jar or mason jar, and then let it cool down. Put the lid on when it's cooled a little and then wait for the sauce to have cooled completely and you can then store the jar in the fridge for up to a week.

To reheat this sauce, use it as you would a jarred sauce and heat it gently in a pan to loosen it. You can add a tablespoon of milk and whisk it in to loosen it further if it's too think for your recipe.

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How To Make White Bean Cheese Sauce

Ingredients

1 Tin White beans Cannellini, Haricot, Butter beans
½ Cup Milk Dairy, Oat
1 Cup Cheddar Strength to suit, shredded

Instructions

Drain and rinse the beans, add to a blender
Add the milk to the blender
Blend on high speed until the beans and milk are totally smooth
Transfer to a small pan and heat on a medium heat
Add your Cheddar cheese and whisk continuously as the sauce simmers
Take off the heat and use or store immediately

White Bean Cheese Sauce Recipe

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