I’d read about it, heard about it, never eaten it, sounded good but I couldn’t find a recipe that I liked (or could buy ingredients for) , so I made one up out of 3 or 4 different ones and it worked an absolute treat.
Smallish pork shoulder cut in half (one I used was 1.3kg)
I packet of dried cannellini beans , reconstituted by putting in a pot of cold water with some seasoning, bringing to the boil, then turning off and leaving to sit for about 2 hours.
Rub some hot cajun seasoning into the pork and sit aside for a while. Put the 2 pieces of pork into a slow cooker. Mix the drained beans with around a cup of BBQ sauce, couple table spoons of brown sugar, decent glug of apple cider vinegar, garlic salt and cayenne pepper and pour over the pork.
Cook on low for 8 hours. I put it on late Saturday night and turned it off Sunday morning.
Lift the pork out, discard the rind and shred the meat with two forks, tip the shredded meat back into the beans and mix through.
Spicy, sweet and smoky flavour, very filling. To quote my son, “looks like shit but tastes sensational”. Serve with crusty bread and sleep alone that night.
Is what I made anything like home made pork n beans in the US? I’ve got zero frame of reference. I’ve never even seen canned pork n beans here.
Depends on the brand. My favorite is B&M Boston Baked Beans. They come in a very thick molasses-based sauce with a big chunk of bacon in every can.
Other brands, like Heinz, mostly use tomato-based sauces, with or without the bacon. In Canada, they also offer beans with molasses or maple syrup added to the sauce. Quite good, but B&M is still better.
When I make my own baked beans, I use salt pork, molasses, Muscovado dark brown sugar, tomato paste, and ground mustard. I soak either Navy or Great Northern beans overnight before boiling them, then mix everything together with plenty of liquid (apple juice and plain water), and let them sit in the oven, covered, at low heat for as long as it takes for the sauce to reduce (several hours at least).
Sounds delicious, glad you enjoyed it. I make it similarly, but no pre-made bbq sauce. To your basic sauce ingredients, I also add a cup or so of chopped onion and celery, quite a bit of mustard (powder or wet), white and black pepper, tomato paste, and also bake the stewed mess for an hour or so in a dutch oven with strips of streaky bacon laid over top.
I may have to make it this weekend…
Next time try serving it with cornbread muffins and a cucumber salad. Hoo boy.
The hEx did home-made pork n’ beans, and lined a slow cooker with thick bacon. She did some other stuff, and probably an incantation or three, but the result was excellent.
For store-bought, I have yet to find anything to match Bush Beans with onions.
Made it many times using a smoked ham hock. Something about the bones that gives it flavor. Speaking of flavor, tastes better the second day (if you can wait).
I went looking for actual corn flour to make cornbread but you just can’t buy it at a supermarket in Australia. What we sell as corn flour is apparently corn starch, it’s used to thicken stews, gravies etc.
I’ve tried that before. The Polenta is always a coarse ground. I tried once to make corn bread with polenta, I ran it though a blender first to grind it finer, Corn Bread still ended up like it had sand in it.
That does it, I guess I’m not moving to Aus then. Well, I don’t know if I’d go through a lot of trouble for occasional cornbread, but I wonder if instant polenta with extra liquid would do…
And don’t mind me, I seem to put a bit of celery in everything.
The standard canned “pork and beans” is navy beans in a thin tomato-based sauce, with a very small chunk of pork fat floating in it. It’s fine if you just want something simple in a hurry, but it’s far, far inferior to homemade. One common tactic is to get the beans themselves from the can, but to rinse the canned sauce off of them and replace it with a homemade one, as well as adding onions, bacon, etc.
In any event, it’s primarily a bean dish with some pork in it, not a pork dish with some beans in it. It sounds like you probably used a lot more pork than is traditional, though I’m not sure how much a “packet” of beans is.
The most popular brand of canned pork and beans around here is Van Camp’s. Also, some people above seem to be confusing pork and beans with baked beans. Canned pork and beans and canned baked beans are two different animals.
My recipe -
2 cups dried navy beans
1 pound package smoked pork neck bones, or a smoked ham hock
1 softball sized onion stuck with 4 whole cloves
2 large carrots, pare off the ends and skin, leave hole or chop roughly
3 or 4 ribs celery, leave the leaves on and cut in half or leave whole
3 bay leaves
a tablespoon of peppercorns bashed once or twice to crack and tie into a bit of gauze with the bay leaves.
enough water to cover the beans and aromatics
Put in a heavy enamelware stock pot or dutch oven. I use la creuset but there are nonbrand versions that cost a hell of a lot less. I prefer not to let my beans contact metal of any sort.
Simmer gently until the beans are more or less done al dente. You want there to be some bite resistance to them, but you don’t want them to be raw.
Reserve the cooking liquid, toss the veggies.
Get about a pound of solid not sliced bacon, the butchers counter in a grocery store should have this, otherwise get the thickest slice bacon you can get. Chop this into bits. Toss the beans and the bacon into a nonmetallic ovensafe casserole dish or bean pot and mix well with 1 large onion chopped, 3 tablespoons molasses, 1 teaspoon dried ground mustard, 1 cup catsup or canned tomato sauce [not spaghetti sauce] and about a tablespoon of worchestershire sauce. Tweak the base flavor but oyu probably won’t need to add salt. If it isn’t ‘wet’ enough, toss in about a cup of the bean cooking liquid. Pop in the oven at 250F for about 6 hours, check about once an hour and stir, add more bean liquid if it looks like it is drying out too much. If it looks too soupy, take the lid off and bake it uncovered for a bit to evaporate the excess liquid. [sorry for the odd instructions, it is something we make fairly frequently in the winter and you just get to where you can judge the consistency.]
Southern style cornbread, at least the way my Mom made it, hasn’t got any flour in it. Just cornmeal (preferably stone ground), buttermilk, egg, baking soda and salt. Poured into a very hot cast iron skillet with a dab of bacon grease in it. The resulting cornbread has a pleasingly gritty texture and wonderful flavor. My Mother used to like to crumble up a wedge of cornbread into a glass of cold buttermilk and eat it that way.
A packet is probably around 2 cups of dried beans. So with a 1.3kg pork, you’re right I ended up with a dish of pulled pork with beans rather than beans with pulled pork.
Next time I’ll use half the amount of meat.
Thanks all for the comments and recipies. I like messing around with cooking different things I’ve never tried before.
Well, I don’t know if I’d go through a lot of trouble for occasional cornbread, but I wonder if instant polenta with extra liquid would do…