Saturday, August 11, 2012

Boston Baked Beans


Congrats to World Food and Wine! This recipe is easy and produces fantastic baked beans! The 'Boston' part of baked beans means that molasses is used as a sweetener. Their recipe needs no tweaking, fiddling, or changing! Please see their website if you want to make these in your oven or with a pressure cooker. This recipe will serve 12 for a side or 8 for a main dish.

I bought lb of dry northern beans. I like them because they have no flavor of their own so all you taste is the sauce! I also like their small size and thin skins. Put your beans in a colander and rinse well. Put them in the largest bowl you own and cover with water until they are under at least 2 inches of water. Too little water will not allow the beans to expand. Soak 1 lb beans for 12 hours. I start mine at about 9PM. The beans in this photo have finished soaking.

The recipe calls for 1/2 lb of bacon or salt pork. I like salt pork as it is easier to trim off the extra fat and is not too smokey! My store sells it already sliced! But you can buy a chunk and cube it yourself. I found mine near the packaged ham next to the raw meats in the butcher area. Check through all the packages to pick out the one with the most pink  meat... some are almost all fat. If you wish vegetarian beans you can skip the meat!  


I use kitchen scissors to open the thick plastic and then a butcher's knife to chop off the layer of fat at the top of the salt pork. 

Turn the crockpot on low and place the salt pork in the bottom of the crockpot. The recipe also calls for adding in an onion cut in fourths right here but no one in my house eats onion so I skipped that step.

Also add in 1/4 c of brown sugar (light or dark no matter) 


1/4 c ketchup 

1/4 c molasses 

1 teaspoon of dried mustard... don't go buy dried mustard just for this recipe... you can add a tablespoon of your favorite brand that you have on hand (more wet mustard than dried as wet is diluted)

Doesn't look to tasty but it will be!!!! 

Drain your soaked beans, add them to the crockpot then add enough water to just cover the beans.

Stir to combine ingredients... still doesn't look tasty does it? But just cover and wait 10 hours! I am a little nutty and like to stir my beans once an hour but you don't have to!

After 10 hours on low these look fantastic! They taste even better! This recipe is the first one I have found that reheats well in the microwave! I like the slow cooker method best as it has fewer steps and makes fewer dishes!

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