I’m not the first person to tell you that beans are magical for all their health benefits. But did you ever think of them as a sauce or condiment?

Recently, I made a healthy pasta dish using cannellini beans to add flavor, coating, texture and to help fill me up. Ingredients were pretty simple, but totally satisfying: lean chicken breasts, fresh spinach, rice vermicelli and those pearly white (beans).

Same concept below, this time when I was in need of a home-cooked meal without having a lot of groceries in the fridge. Enter black beans, rice, frozen corn and those same lovely lean chicken breasts that hang out in the freezer. Blend ’em all together and you have a satiating beans-and-rice dish minus the lard. I sprinkled the chicken breasts with a little chili powder to add flavor, but the black beans added the rich “sauce.”