Silenus’ recipe sounds pretty similar to mine, which is actually my dad’s recipe except he used lima beans. Everybody loved his beans except I always privately thought they were just too mushy. The Great Northern beans keep their shape and texture and are much superior for this purpose.
Alton Brown’s recipeis great. I always use cayenne to taste, rather than jalapenos; otherwise, made as written. They always come out fantastic, and I’m not that big of a bean person, so for me to like it is saying something.
I do use the cast iron dutch oven, and I think it makes a difference. You wouldn’t get quite the same flavor concentration and caramelization in a pot on the stove top.
I take a red pepper and a green pepper and cut them fine.
Take two sausages and microwave.
Put beans from can into bowl. Top with the onions and the green pepper.
Put hot sauce on top for added zeal.
Nuke for 5 minutes.
5 minutes? On high? :eek:
3 minutes on reheat works fine for me.
Sorry for the delay but I have the bean report for you.
First things first, I do have to say that I modified the procedure somewhat. I’ve never liked the texture of bacon cooked for hours in dishes like this. It doesn’t really fall apart nor does it hang together in any kind of mouth pleasing way. For this dish, I cut the bacon into one inch pieces and fried it off in the lodge dutch oven I used as my cooking vessel. After getting the bacon nice and crisp and rendering out most of the fat, I removed the bacon and stored it in the fridge. I then added the cooked beans and the rest of the ingredients to the bacon drippings for the long oven bake. About 45 minutes before the beans were finished, I carefully stirred most of the bacon pieces into the beans, saving about a cup to garnish individual bowls.
The general response was that the beans were very good with absolutely spot on texture and consistency but perhaps a bit bland. Most people welcomed a dusting of cayenne pepper and some minced, raw red onion. Next time I make this recipe, I’m going to experiment by adding some tomato paste and maybe half a can of shredded chipotle peppers in adobo sauce.
I didn’t know it at the time but I had one vegetarian among my group of guests. Obviously you could make this dish vegetarian friendly by leaving out the bacon but would you have anything worth eating if you did that? How would yo modify this recipe to make it veg friendly?
Many thanks for all the kind replies.
Vegetarian beans are perfectly tasty. Just fry the onions in butter or olive oil instead of bacon fat. If you add those chipotle peppers (or use Spanish paprika), you can get a bit of the bacon smokiness in the veggie beans.
Baked beans basically comes down to the following formula for me:
Beans + onions + smoked or cured (meat/fat) product + homemade barbecue sauce (which is basically what the Worcestershire, ketchup, vinegar, brown sugar, molasses, and spices end up being.) I try to save the rendered fat from any smoked meats I make and use that as my fat base. If you smoke meats, just collect the fat, place it in a ramekin or bowl, put it in the fridge, and, voila, you have solidified smoked cooking fat.
As for next time, you can try it with tomato paste, but I personally find ketchup works better, as it already has a nice mix of sweet, salty, spicy, and sour flavors (and this is coming from somebody who generally hates ketchup.)
I like to add butter, in the end.
Most basic baked beans are on the bland side by design. Remember, these recipes were written by New England housewives, coming from a long English tradition of bland, tasteless food. It took the invasion of Britain by the rest of the Empire for “British cuisine” to not be an oxymoron.
I usually add red pepper flakes at the very least.
I sweeten my baked beans with maple syrup and place sliced apples (use a firm apple that doesn’t fall apart when baked) on top while the beans cook. Yum. A little dark rum doesn’t hurt, either.
I remember my grandma making baked beans from scratch! The usual ingredients - onion, brown sugar, and bacon, and very tasty they were. I hesitate to admit - don’t tell anyone - but I can come up with the exact same thing starting with Grandma Brown’s baked beans. I don’t know if they are sold outside of NY State, it’s basically just cooked beige Great Northern beans, that you can put in a pan and doctor up. Not at all like the canned Bushes beans.