What Meals Can I Make with Just Rice, Beans, and Canned Tomatoes?
Three ingredients, more meals than you'd think.
Rice, beans, and canned tomatoes might be the three most common items in any food pantry bag. They're cheap, shelf-stable, and nutritious. But staring at them on your counter, it's easy to feel stuck. What do you actually make?
More than you'd think. These three ingredients are the foundation of meals people have been cooking around the world for centuries. Here's what you can do with them.
The base meal: rice and beans with tomato
Cook rice. Heat beans with canned tomatoes. Serve the beans over the rice. That's a complete meal. Rice and beans together form a complete protein, and the tomatoes add acidity and depth. If you have absolutely nothing else, this feeds you well.
Our Rice and Beans recipe is exactly this, and it's one of the most-viewed recipes on the site.
Turn it into soup
Add water to the beans and tomatoes and you have soup. Dice an onion into it if you have one. Let it simmer for 20 minutes and the tomatoes break down into a broth. Serve the rice on the side or stir it directly into the pot.
This is essentially what our Chickpea and Rice Stew does, and it works with any type of bean.
Make it a chili
Beans plus canned tomatoes is already most of a chili. If you have any ground beef or even an extra can of beans, you're there. But even without meat, a bean chili with tomatoes over rice is a full dinner. If you have chili powder, add it. If you don't, it still works.
See our One-Pot Chili for the full version, or just make the bean and tomato version and skip the beef.
Stuff it in a tortilla
If you have tortillas, you have burritos. Beans, rice, and a spoonful of tomato sauce rolled up in a tortilla is a complete meal you can eat with your hands. Add cheese if you have it. This is the same filling that's in our Bean and Rice Burrito.
Cook the rice in the tomatoes
Instead of cooking rice in plain water, cook it in canned tomatoes mixed with water. This gives you a simple Spanish-style rice with color and flavor built in. Use roughly equal parts diced tomatoes and water (about 1 can of tomatoes plus 1 cup of water for 1 cup of rice). Serve the beans on the side or on top.
Add one more ingredient and the options multiply
If you have just one more thing beyond rice, beans, and tomatoes, here's what opens up:
An onion: Dice it and cook it before adding anything else. This is the single biggest flavor upgrade you can make.
Eggs: Fry an egg and put it on top of the rice and beans. The runny yolk becomes a sauce.
Cheese: Melted cheese on beans and rice turns it into something that feels indulgent.
Tortillas: Burritos, tacos, or quesadillas.
Any meat: Brown it first, then add the beans and tomatoes. Ground beef, canned chicken, or hot dogs all work.
Any frozen vegetables: Stir them into the beans and tomatoes for the last few minutes of cooking.
It's not boring, it's foundational
Rice, beans, and canned tomatoes isn't a limitation. It's a starting point. Cultures around the world have built entire cuisines around these three ingredients for good reason: they're nutritious, they're filling, they're versatile, and they taste good together.
Use our ingredient search to check off rice, beans, tomatoes, and anything else you have. We'll show you every meal you can make right now.