I recently got a Weber Smokey Mountain smoker. We’ve likely only got a few suitable weekends left before rainy/cold fall weather arrives. I’d like to make some smoky beans. I’ll likely smoke a whole chicken at the same time. Anyone have suggestions for a suitable recipe?
I’ve smoked meats plenty of times previously but never actually smoked beans before
When I got my Smokey Mountain a few years ago I got a book called Project Smoke at the same time. The author’s mantra is “smoke everything”, so it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s a recipe in there. I’ll check when I get home from work this evening.
One place you might look for inspiration on this is for making beans in a horno or beehive oven in New Mexico.
In the horno, you build a fire in the horno to bring it up to temperature, remove the ashes, load the food, cover the opening, and seal it with mud.
An horno is considered an excellent approach to smoking meats but is also used for beans, bread, and cobbler.
So you might look for bean recipes for an horno.
By the way, my favorite beans are these:
Ranch beans
This is a very easy to prepare recipe for beans from a ranch in South Texas.Note that this isn’t the Ranch Style Beans like you can buy in cans at the grocery store.
Ingredients
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
2 medium tomatoes, coarsely chopped
4 serrano peppers, finely chopped (w/seeds)
1 cup cilantro, finely chopped
2 cups “Clamato” juice
2 cans of Bush’s pinto beans
6 strips of bacon
1 Tbs oil (or lard)Instructions
Cook the chopped onion in hot oil (lard) until it begins to soften.
Add the bacon.
When the bacon starts to brown, add the beans and stir in the remaining ingredients.
Simmer for 45 minutes.Comments
The amount of heat you end up with is highly dependent on the size and heat of the serrano peppers. Four large serrano peppers may be almost unbearably hot while four small serrano peppers may be too boringly mild. So adjust the number of your serrano peppers to your taste. You can also omit the seeds from the peppers if you want much less heat.
Here is a picture of a horno:
Here is an article on using a horno:
FYI, they make insulation blankes for the WSMs for winter use.
And I highly recommend the gasket kits they sell for them to reduce the amount of air/smoke leakage.
Look into the “Minion Method” and “Fire Snake”/“Charcoal Snake” methods for long duration smoking as well.
The horno oven is an interesting concept. And the ranch beans recipe sounds yummy - I bet if I smoked in in a foil tray for a few hours that would make a great bean dish.
I don’t understand. How does the second sentence relate to the first-- suitable for what? I have a Smokey Mountain. A smoker of that quality is not just meant for Summer use.
I often make a jalapeno pinto bean BBQ side dish that’s a lot like the ranch beans recipe @billy-jack posted. The use of Clamato juice is a new one, though. Interesting…
As for how to cook the beans, that’s going to be tricky in the smoker. You probably want to start sauteing the chopped onion, pepper and bacon in oil on a hot grill or stovetop first (I’d add some minced garlic too). Then combine with the other ingredients in a dutch oven or cast iron pot with a top and put it in the smoker to simmer. I’d start top off for maybe just the first 1/2 hour or so, then put the top on, because you want some smokiness to get into the beans, but not too much. That bean cooking liquid is going to absorb more smoke than the chicken will. Also if you cook the beans top-off the entire time, which low and slow for a chicken might be an hour and a half to two hours, too much of the cooking liquid could evaporate and you might end up with a dried-out bean brick.
Not sure about space availability in a WSM, but on my offset smoker I like to position a Dutch oven full of pinto beans directly beneath the brisket. The beans keep moisture in the smoke chamber and the brisket drippings fall into the beans - win/win
Intruiging…
You could totally do that with a WSM, since it’s a bullet-style smoker with two levels of grills. So you could put your Dutch oven with the beans on the lower grill and the brisket, or whatever you’re BBQing, above. The Dutch oven, handles and all, would just have to be small enough to fit inside. My WSM is the 18” diameter model, but I think they make 22” versions too.
How long do you keep your beans in there— surely only a small fraction of the time you cook the brisket, right?
The classic Boston baked beans recipes I’ve seen need 8-12 hours at 250 F, so rather a large portion of the 10-14 hour smoke time for a brisket. Probably coinciding well with the smoking time before stall, especially if you’re going to wrap at that point (mostly cutting off the drippings that are the point of the technique).
You’d reheat the beans shortly before serving if you want them piping hot.
I promised I’d look up the recipe from my book of smoker recipes a few days ago, and well, I forgot. Sorry about that. But here you go:
Smokehouse Beans (from Project Smoke by Steven Raichlen)
6 slices bacon, cut into 1/4 inch pieces
1 medium onion, chopped
1 poblano pepper, stemmed, seeded, and diced
3 (15 oz) cans of cooked beans (In the notes he says he uses a mix of white (great northern), red (kidney) and black beans but the ingredient list just says “beans” so I imagine any kind will work)
1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup of your favorite barbecue sauce
1/4 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons cider vinegar
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
Cook the bacon in a heavy pot or dutch oven. Remove all but 2 tablespoons of the fat.
Add the onion and poblano pepper and cook until lightly browned.
Add the beans, sugar, molasses, barbecue sauce, ketchup, Worcestershire, mustard, and vinegar. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Set up your smoker and preheat to 225-250F. Add wood as specified by the manufacturer.
Smoke the beans, uncovered, until thick and richly flavored, about 2 - 2 1/2 hours, stirring from time to time to ensure the mixture cooks evenly. If the beans start to dry out, stir in 1 cup of water and cover the pot. Adjust the seasoning before serving, adding salt, sugar, and vinegar to taste.
I mentioned this discussion to my nephew. He used to live in New Mexico and still owns a house there, so it surprised me when he claimed that “horno” is never used as the name of a beehive oven other than “horno” being a general name for any kind of oven in Spanish.
Instead, he claimed that some other name applies to the beehive ovens. However, when I tried looking that name up, I could find nothing that said that it has ever been used as a name of beehive ovens.
Sometimes I wonder about him.
Suitable as in good weather for smoking (we live in the Great Lakes region). As in not having to stand out in the cold, rain, and snow. And while it’s certainly possible to use a smoker year-round, doing so in the snow, wind, and cold uses much more fuel, and not conducive to spending an afternoon sitting on the patio with a beer in hand.
Aw, I was just ribbin’ ya. I didn’t mean to suggest you were too chicken to BBQ in the cold. I hope we don’t have a beef now!
Seriously, I get it, it’s much nicer to tend to the smoker on a warm sunny day. Congrats on getting the WSM-- it’s a great smoker. After a brief period of getting the coals going and adjusting the vents, it holds a steady temperature like an oven. I’ve gotten up at 4am to start a long smoke, and once I was confident the temp was stabilized, I’ve gone back to sleep for an hour or two.
One pro tip, if I may: use sand in the heat sink bowl instead of water or any other liquid. That way you can put a layer of foil over the sand to catch the drippings, and the cleanup will be much easier. Some people think the water adds moisture to the meat, but it doesn’t. Some think adding wine, apple juice or other flavored liquids adds flavor. I’ve tried that many times over the years, and it really doesn’t. Sand makes for nice, steady temp regulation. The only advantage water has over sand is, it might help the smoker run a couple degrees cooler, but that’s easily adjusted for.
Did you make the smoky beans and chicken this past weekend? Let us know how it turned out.