Baked beans, nom nom nom….

Posted by Michael on Jun 28, 2008 in Recipes | 0 comments

Here’s something I threw together today because my mom is heading over on the ferry tonight and likes some good home cookin’. My baked beans are really easy to make and they do away with any pre-soaking stuff with the beans. It turns out you don’t need to pre-soak the beans – every recipe for baked beans since the beginning of time has been wrong. You heard it here first. Soaking the beans actually weakens the flavour of the bean too, so just cook ‘em straight away. I make mine in manageable 1 cup batches (makes more than two cups when you’re done).

Baked Beans

1 cup white navy beans
water and salt
1 strip of good quality bacon, chopped
1 small onion, chopped
1/4 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon dried mustard
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tablespoon molasses (or just use more brown sugar).
salt and fresh cracked black pepper to taste

Fill a medium size pot with plenty of water and salt generously, the way you would for boiling pasta. Add the beans and bring to a boil. As soon as it’s boiling, reduce heat and let it simmer very gently (just barely any movement happening in the beans) for two hours, uncovered.  Start checking them for tenderness after an hour or so.  When tender, drain them in a collarder and add to a casserole pot. Add the chopped bacon, the onion, ketchup, mustard, brown sugar, molasses and pepper. Add just enough water to come a half inch above the beans and stir gently. Place in a 275 degree oven uncovered for two hours (a toaster oven will do this more efficiently if you use a casserole pot that’s small enough). Check to see if it needs more water occasionally. Season to taste with salt. Makes a perfect accompaniment to any breakfast, barbecue or campfire meal.