Are baked beans supposed to be sweet?

Cafe Society
1

I love beans in rice and in chilli so I thought I’d give baked beans a try. I got a recipe from the Pioneer Woman’s website: Best Baked Beans Recipe - How to Make Baked Beans and both my boyfriend and I thought the result was way too sweet - we were expecting something savory and spicy (I added red peppers to the mix). Is that how they are supposed to taste? Is there something wrong with the recipe? Did I use the wrong kind of BBQ sauce?

PS - my boyfriend is Irish and I grew up all over the place so neither of us have much experience in the way of how baked beans are supposed to taste. (Well, my boyfriend likes beans with his toast for breakfast, but I digress.)

2

Yes, they’re supposed to be sweet.

3

Check out this thread I started in February.

I tried silenus’s recipe, which came out nicely. Note that all of the recipes have sugar.

4

The traditional style is (IMHO) oversweetened. I prefer them very light on the brown sugar, but there’s no hope of winning that battle.

My mother made some last year that were barely sweet and heavily baconed, and I nearly ruptured my intestines enjoying them.

5

Yeah I might try that. The taste of sweet + beans is so weird to me - I don’t think I can get used to it. Less sugar, more bacon it is.

6

I hate them because of the sweetness. I don’t like beans as it is, but there’s something just so much worse about sweetened beans than ones alone. When my parents forced me to eat them as a kid, I’d rinse them in hot water before I could force them down.

7

Don’t they put sweet bean paste in desserts in Korea, and other weird things like beans in syrup over shaved ice? Or is that just in Japan and other parts of Asia?

But yea, I perused that recipe and that seems about the right amount of Brown sugar for that quantity of baked beans, although when I make baked beans I use mollasses and less brown sugar, the mollasses adds a bit of sweetness without being overpowering, also I prefer that combination with ketchup instead of barbecue sauce, which also makes it less sweet. But yes, ideally baked beans should be pretty darn sweet, but there is a fine balance between sweet and overpoweringly sweet.

8

Yeah usually they is an amount of brown sugar or maple syrup in them. But I have tasted some that are way too sweet.

If you put onions in them that often will take away from the sweetness of them.

9

devilsknew, red bean freezes are a Chinese dessert-y drink. You can get them at actual Chinese restaurants–they are unbelievably delicious. And sweet!

10

Personally, I think that baked beans should have a sweet component, but the overall flavor should be savory, not sweet.

I see that, in addition to 1/2 cup of brown sugar, the recipe calls for barbecue sauce (brand unspecified) and canned pork & beans (brand unspecified). A half cup of brown sugar shouldn’t overwhelm the amount of beans in three 28-ounce cans of beans, so I wonder if the barbecue sauce you used was already on the sweet side? After all, barbecue sauce is another thing that runs the gamut from predominantly sweet to not at all sweet. I wonder, also, if the canned beans you used were already on the sweet side. Sugar + sweetish barbeque sauce + sweetish beans could produce a somewhat over-sweet finished product.

Personally, I have two favorite sets of baked bean flavorings. One involves adding maple syrup to the beans, then topping them with sliced apples before baking - this comes out pretty sweet. The other uses soy sauce, sesame oil, onions, garlic, rum and mustard - this is the one I like best, and it produces a very savory dish.

11

They should be savory AND sweet. I understand they’re one of the things furriners think are really gross.

12

That recipe is just wrong. Boston Baked Beans are sweetened with molasses and would never, ever have BBQ sauce or green peppers. Buy some B&M baked beans to see a more authentic New England taste.

13

Those are BBQ Beans, not Baked Beans. Different dish entirely. Good, but different.

14

I went and looked up the flavors of Bush’s Baked Beans. Brown sugar is a major component of many of them.

15

For a historical perspective, remember that Boston was at one node of the trade triangle of slaves to the Caribbean, raw sugar to Boston, and rum back to Africa. Molasses is a by-product of sugar production so there was a ready supply. Beans and salt pork could be kept over winter in the days before refrigeration. There was even a famous molasses disaster in Boston. My father was 10 at the time and remembered it.

16

Molasses and brown sugar are good, but maple syrup (if you can get it over there) is better. Baked beans definitely need something sweet in them.

And if you’re starting with canned baked beans, if you’re not just dumping them in the pot and heating them as-is because you’re too tired to cook, then you should rinse off whatever sauce they came with and start over. It’s not hard to do better than the standard sauces they usually come in.

17

Thanks for the tips guys. (I think you’re right, cwthree, the bbq sauce we used was pretty sweet to begin with.) Yes, in Korea we do have sweet bean paste, but we use it in desserts, which to me is different than beans being sweet in a main meal. (Anyway I don’t like that stuff.)

18

Here’s my family’s recipe:

Maybe it’s just because it’s what I grew up on, but I luuurve these beans. We very rarely have leftovers.

19

HazelNutCoffee, if you are ever in New Orleans, make sure to try the traditional red beans and rice (typically served on mondays) that are offered in just about any restaurant down there, from gourmet fine dining to the corner dive.

They are not sweet, (well, maybe a tiny bit sweet, but nothing like baked beans) and usually has big chunks of cajun andouille sausage.

You can buy boxed mixes to make them yourself (Zatarain’s) and add the extras (sausage, green peppers, stewed tomato) that you enjoy the most.

Red beans and rice are a New Orleans staple, and judging from your OP, something I bet you would really enjoy.

Matthew