White Bean Smash with Olive Oil & Herbs

Cannellini beans smashed with garlic, lemon, olive oil, and herbs, piled into a bowl with Rustic Bakery crackers or crostini for dipping. Simple enough to improvise, but we’re giving it a proper recipe, so the recipe comes out right every time.

We make this constantly, mostly because it asks for nothing you don’t already have. Two cans of beans, a lemon, whatever herbs haven’t gone soft in the crisper drawer.

The version most people make is fine. It’s also usually a little dry, and it tastes like raw garlic for about an hour afterward. Both of those are easy to fix and neither one costs you any extra time. Use more olive oil than seems correct, and warm the garlic in it for a minute before anything else happens. That’s really the whole recipe.

One pan, one fork.

• 2 cans (15 oz each) cannellini beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 garlic clove, grated or finely minced
• ⅓ cup Clif Family Extra Virgin Olive Oil, plus more for the top
• 1 lemon — zest and juice
• 2 Tbsp fresh herbs, chopped — rosemary, thyme, parsley or a mix
• Flaky salt and freshly cracked black pepper

Rustic Bakery crackers or crostini, for serving.

Serves 6–8 · 10 minutes · serve warm or at room temperature

1. Warm the beans. Beans, garlic and olive oil into a skillet over medium-low heat. Three or four minutes, stir once. You’re warming them, not cooking them. The beans soften up for smashing and the garlic loses its raw edge.
2. Smash. Off the heat, fork or potato masher. Leave about a third of the beans whole so it still eats like beans and not hummus.
3. Add the rest. Lemon zest, all the juice from the lemon, the herbs, a good pinch of flaky salt, plenty of pepper. Stir it together.
4. Taste it. It will need more salt than you expect, and probably more lemon. Keep going until it tastes bright instead of beany.
5. Serve. Shallow bowl, a well pressed into the middle, olive oil poured into the well. Flaky salt over the top. Crackers on the side.
   
   

Want to fancy it up? Chile flakes. Or swap some of the olive oil for the oil out of a jar of sun-dried tomatoes.

• The ratio worth memorizing: one can of beans, 3 tablespoons olive oil, half a lemon. Once you have that, you can make this without looking anything up.
• Herbs depend on the month. Rosemary and thyme in fall and winter, parsley or chives in spring and summer. Woody herbs go in the pan with the beans. Soft ones go in at the end or they turn brown.
• Don’t serve it cold. Olive oil stiffens in the fridge and the whole bowl goes dull. Room temperature at minimum.
• Two days in the fridge, covered. Let it come back to room temperature and give it a fresh pour of oil before it goes out.

Open the 2022 Vino Del Pranzo Cabernet Sauvignon. Beans, garlic, rosemary and a lot of olive oil is a fairly Italian plate, and Vino del Pranzo means wine of the meal, so this is more or less what it was made for. The rich olive oil compliments the tannin in the wine.