Baked beans taste way better if you cook them with 1 ingredient

are raving about one for baked beans - and you probably already have the in your cupboard. It's hard to eat beans on toast without being thrust back to your childhood, when your parents finally succumbed to the easy comfort food on busy school nights.

Whether it was on toast, a beige buffet with chicken dippers, or even instead of mushy peas with fish and chips, tinned baked beans are dripping in nostalgia. But even the most can sometimes do with a little makeover, and one tip has chefs positively raving. The store-cupboard essential makes beans "sing" and builds "layers of flavour" in the cheap and cheerful dish, according to food writers.

Stephanie Ganz, a professional food writer, shared on that Worcestershire sauce is her secret ingredient, which gives baked beans a "certain je ne sais quoi that makes them sing".

She believes the sauce, which also has shallots, garlic, soy sauce, salt and vinegar inside, adds depth and layers of flavour due to the umami notes of anchovy and tamarind.

To make the upgraded dish, Stephanie adds two cans of to a casserole dish alongside some onion, garlic, ketchup and brown sugar, with black pepper and a tablespoon of the secret ingredient, Worcestershire sauce.

To really up the ante, instead of cooking the dish on the hob, the beans are baked in the oven for 45 minutes at 175C.

She also recommended adding some smoked bacon before baking if you have it, or a teaspoon of smoked paprika to add a smoky flavour.

Reddit was full of easy upgrade suggestions from home chefs, including onion powder, garlic powder or mustard powder, while some argued that HP brown sauce is actually better than Worcestershire.

Another version on Reddit included basil, Worcestershire sauce, and tabasco, although they said: "My wife is partial to my 'Mexican' version: chili powder, smoked paprika, ground cumin, ground coriander, onion, and garlic powder."