I like baked beans. I have a special pot just for baked beans, although I haven’t got around to actually baking beans in it (I usually buy cans).
Upon reading this whole thread, Ukulele Ike’s recipe is the one that I like so much. My mom and dad are from New Hampshire and my dad used to make Boston Baked Beans at least once a month when I was young. The beans absorbed the sweet, smoky, vinegary flavors very well. They tasted great when freshly made with the steamed brown bread and they tasted even better the next day. I still remember having baked bean sandwiches; it sounds disgusting but they were DELISH!!!
Mmmm…baked beans. Ike, your recipe sounds fabulous!
Never had baked beans on pizza, although there is a pizza joint in town that makes a pizza with chicken, BBQ sauce, and black beans (and cheese, of course). It’s delicious.
Well, since everyone’s been so complimentary, here’s the real recipe…
1 pound Maine yellow-eye beans (acceptable substitutes: Great Northern or white navy beans)
1/4 pound salt pork
1/2 cup dark, full-flavored molasses
2 tblsp dark rum
1 tsp mustard powder
Salt & pepper to taste
Soak beans overnight. The following day, put the beans and what remains of their soaking liquid into a large pot, adding more water to ensure beans are covered. Bring to a simmer and, after 15 minutes, check every 5 minutes until a sharp breath will split the skin of a bean. Drain the beans and return the liquid to the pot, keeping at a slow simmer.
Preheat the oven to 250. Cut the salt pork into bite-sized pieces and pour boiling water over to cover well. Drain after several minutes, discarding liquid. Mix the salt pork pieces into the prepared beans and pour them together into a 2-quart bean pot. Stir in the molasses and rum. Dissolve the mustard powder in a bit of water and mix in as well. Add seasoning to taste, starting with 1/2 tsp each of salt and pepper. Pour over just enough of the simmering bean liquid to be visible through the beans. Cover and place in oven. Bake for 5 hours, tasting occasionally, noting texture and seasoning, adding more of the remaining bean liquid (or else water) as necessary. When the beans are soft and succulent, stir them well, uncover, and bake 1/2 hour more to thicken the liquid into sauce. Serve with cole slaw and brown bread.
– Thanx and a tip of the hat to John Thorne, “Knowing Beans” (Collected in SERIOUS PIG, North Point Press, 1996)
I love baked beans and have my own ceramic bean pot though I usually use sorghum instead of molasses.
And I think corn and tuna pizza is great!
But many people do not consider me normal. 
Count me as an American that can’t stand baked beans.
I know plenty of people that do love them but for some reason I find them to look like something I should not eat. They don’t even taste that good to me. Too sweet for my tastes.
Give me some refried pinto beans or black beans and I am in heaven.
Weird but I don’t like whole beans.
Canadian baked-bean lover checking in. I love them in the cans, but my mom makes wonderful baked ones.
ManOhMan. That and a couple slabs of a good 1015 onion and you got some goooooooooood Texas vittles.
$1.19 a can - but at least it’s a big can of HEINZ. Some things I miss about the UK.
Here’re the ingredients on a can of American Busch’s Best baked beans:
Prepared white beans, water, brown sugar, sugar, tomato paste, bacon, salt, corn starch, mustard, onion poweder, spices, extractive of paprika, garlic powder, and natural flavor.
I for one would never have thought there was tomato in there. How I like to eat them (occasionally, as in once or twice a year) is with hot dog chunks - franks and beans (and I’ve always heard them referred to as Boston baked beans, but then I’m originally from Boston…). Don’t care for the bacon in the beans, but then, I’m eating them with hot dogs anyway, so what do I care?
I tried the british baked beans for breakfast when I was there this past year. Must say, I took one bite and that was it for me! Totally repulsive. But maybe it was the B&B, because the eggs were horrible too (but then again, the breakfasts in Stratford-upon-Avon, Edinburgh, and Ireland weren’t all that great, so it wasn’t just one place) and the sausages made me feel bloated and sick for the rest of the day.
Give me cereal for breakfast and beans and franks for dinner and I’ll be happy
I have a can of Bush’s Vegetarian Baked Beans in front of me, but I see Sivalensis beat me to it. The only difference in ingredients between these and the “Bush’s Best” is that (not surprisingly) the pork is omitted and there are extra “spices” listed before the extractive of paprika.
Why would anyone who can cook serve canned baked beans? Well, when you have 10 minutes to get dinner on the table in order to leave enough time to make the kids bathe before bed and you realize that your youngest is in a stage where she won’t touch whatever protein source you’ve prepared, half a cup of baked beans will provide her with 6 grams of protein. And you don’t have to have remembered to soak white beans overnight and then cook them for hours in order to serve them to her.
Absolutely. Sweetcorn belongs with cheese in toasted sandwiches, and baked beans belong on toast… at least in NZ anyway.
Our baked beans are no doubt very similar to TheLoadedDog’s Oz variety as the most poular variety sold here are the Watties brand – part of Heinz – and are Navy beans in a thick tomato sauce. One may optionally purchase them with added bacon, sausages, and/or cheese.
Gidday Apollyon long time no er… read.
Watties did a big advertising campaign in Australia a few years ago, but I don’t know if they’re still here or not. Heinz’ most popular Baked Beans product is the tomato sauce variety, but I prefer the ham sauce one. Mmmmm. I’d be hungry if I wasn’t so full of vegemite and crumpets.
You’re kidding right, it’s not a BBQ in Texas w/ out a pot of baked beans. Onions, bacon, brown sugar, etc. out of the can or homemade…gotta have 'em.
Of course ol’fashioned pinto’s ain’t bad neither!
We definitely have sweetcorn in England - I’ve been enjoying the wonders of that, and corn on the cob for many a year now. Although…
…is something I haven’t noticed. For me it seems that everything has peas served with/in it - yeuck! Perhaps I don’t notice sweetcorn since I like it.
Baked beans with baked potatos - yummy! Or served neat, with a generous dash of Worcestershire sauce.
So, just to check, the main difference between UK and US baked beans is the addition/lack of tomato sauce - am I right?
Here’s the deal. They’ve got to be Heinz - nothing else even comes close. And…
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They’ve got to be eaten cold. Straight from the tin cold. Preferably refridgerated. Heat them up and they lose their taste and go mushy. Urrrkk.
I have to add that my experience tells me I’m something at odds with most other UK’ers on this one.
A dear departed colleague of mine (who, incidentally, coined the phrase ‘Kingdom of Butter’) used to excitedly announce that he was treating himself to ‘[something*] surprise’ that evening; when we eventually quizzed him on this it turned out that it was just a large bowl with something* in the bottom and a tin of beans tipped over the top. (the ‘surprise’ element being derived from the complete covering of beans) sigh I miss him.
*The [something] might be sausages or pie or a pastie etc.
The beans ive always hated was thge "bbq " beans which tasted like pork and beans made with ketchup … .like incuded with any chicken dinner from kfc the store deli ect …
but the baked beans im used to is made with brown sugar and pork ,onions and really sweet
in fact heinz makes beans here aso but I never knew they made difrent things til the salad cream discussion came up …
someone should make a huge international food store heh i know they have various ones but say have one huge website ,
One thing that did come out of the original article is the “Daily Mail” element of society fuming about the percieved ingratitude of the refugees. “They should be grateful for anything they get etc”
No one seems able to reverse the sitaution and imagine themselves in whatever hell-hole the refugees came from and being given a nice big tin of Kash-kalash with Crab juice © The simpsons.
Also as a previous poster pointed out BBs are an incredibly pikey thing to give to a charity collection as they cost about 15p in a supermarket.
9p at Tesco.
Kal - the pikey. :mad: