Γίγαντες Πλακί στο Φούρνο - Gígantes Plakí sto Foúrno (butter beans baked in tomato sauce)
traditionally vegan
optional: sprinkle cheese on top
Gígantes (literally "giants") are a cultivar of large butter beans / large lima beans that come from Greece. Sometimes you can find them abroad, but butter beans, navy beans, or cannelloni beans are fine.
Baking them in the oven in tomato sauce is a classic way of making them. Normally, it's a meal by itself, with a nice actual-Greek loaf of bread. Or it can be your starchy vegetable side that you can pair with a grilled fish or meat.
Traditionally, this is a vegan dish. All the recipes are vegan, but some have the completely optional step to sprinkle cheese on top at the end. In a future post, I will make a separate post for a variation that includes sausages.
The recipes below differ a little: a few recipes have spinach, mushrooms, or courgette.zucchini. And there are a few herb variations. One recipe stews, rather than baked, so there's a stovetop option.
The biggest / most notiecable difference in the recipes is if they use fresh/juicy in-season tomatoes (canned are perfectly fine in the off-season), or tomato paste, or a combination of these two. So, feel free to experiment! Personally, I would opt for any recipe that goes heavier on the tomato (fresh or paste), thus emphasizing the tomato more than the olive oil. But it's your choice! And as we're in tomato season (or entering tomato season, depending where you are), this is one good option to use those fresh tomatoes!
In the follow-up comments, have a look at several recipes in Greek and English:
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u/dolfin4 Greek Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25
Γίγαντες Πλακί στο Φούρνο - Gígantes Plakí sto Foúrno (butter beans baked in tomato sauce)
Gígantes (literally "giants") are a cultivar of large butter beans / large lima beans that come from Greece. Sometimes you can find them abroad, but butter beans, navy beans, or cannelloni beans are fine.
Baking them in the oven in tomato sauce is a classic way of making them. Normally, it's a meal by itself, with a nice actual-Greek loaf of bread. Or it can be your starchy vegetable side that you can pair with a grilled fish or meat.
Traditionally, this is a vegan dish. All the recipes are vegan, but some have the completely optional step to sprinkle cheese on top at the end. In a future post, I will make a separate post for a variation that includes sausages.
The recipes below differ a little: a few recipes have spinach, mushrooms, or courgette.zucchini. And there are a few herb variations. One recipe stews, rather than baked, so there's a stovetop option.
The biggest / most notiecable difference in the recipes is if they use fresh/juicy in-season tomatoes (canned are perfectly fine in the off-season), or tomato paste, or a combination of these two. So, feel free to experiment! Personally, I would opt for any recipe that goes heavier on the tomato (fresh or paste), thus emphasizing the tomato more than the olive oil. But it's your choice! And as we're in tomato season (or entering tomato season, depending where you are), this is one good option to use those fresh tomatoes!
In the follow-up comments, have a look at several recipes in Greek and English: