Content

• Ingredients
• To step
• Method 1 of 3: Make baked beans with canned beans
• Method 2 of 3: Make baked beans with dried beans
• Method 3 of 3: Variations
• Tips
• Warnings
• Necessities

Baked beans are a delicious but powerful dish from the American kitchen: white beans in a thick sauce with pork or bacon. It is a versatile dish that you can eat as a snack or as a full meal. You can make it with canned beans, but also with dried beans. Whatever you choose, it's easy to make and even easier to eat! The recipe in this article is enough for an entire family, and you'll probably have some left over for the next day.

Ingredients

• 3 cans of white beans of 840 grams (or 6 cans of 420 grams) OR about 800 grams of dried cannellini beans or white beans.
• Optional: 8 slices of bacon (preferably thick slices)
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1/2 green pepper, diced
• 180 ml barbecue sauce
• 160 ml of syrup
• 10 ml mustard (preferably Dijon mustard)
• 60 ml white vinegar or apple cider vinegar

To step

Method 1 of 3: Make baked beans with canned beans

1. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees. The baked beans are best when cooked slowly in an oven that is not too hot, then the sauce gets a nice thick consistency - there is nothing worse than baked beans that are too thin. The dish should be left in the oven for several hours, stay close so you can check regularly.
2. Place the barbecue sauce, syrup, mustard and vinegar in a container. Mix well.
   • You can also use 100 grams of brown sugar instead of syrup. If you do have syrup, but not enough, you can replace every 5 ml of syrup that you lack with 100 grams of white sugar.
3. Cut the bacon in half widthways. Fry the bacon in a frying pan, but don't let it get too crispy. It should still be soft - it will cook even further in the oven. Place the fried bacon slices on a paper towel plate to absorb the fat and set it aside. You can keep any excess fat in the pan for later use. But don't get all the fat out of the pan; if you tilt the pan you should still see the fat moving.
   • You don't have to clean the pan! The remaining fat in the pan gives the dish that typical smoky taste.
   • If you are not using bacon in this recipe, you can heat 15 ml of olive oil (or other vegetable oil) in a pan to fry the ingredients in the following steps.
4. Place the finely chopped onion and bell pepper in the frying pan. Fry the onion and bell pepper on high heat for 2 to 4 minutes.
5. Add the contents of the cans of beans to the pan. Mix everything well over high heat. If the frying pan is not large enough, you can transfer the ingredients to a larger frying pan or frying pan.
6. Add the sauce and syrup mixture to the other ingredients. Mix it well together so that it becomes a compact whole. Let it simmer for 1 to 2 minutes on low heat.
7. Move the mixture from the baking pan to an oven dish. If it was already in an oven-safe frying pan, you can leave it in. If you are using bacon, you can now place the bacon slices over the bean mixture. The bacon will continue to cook in the oven and become nice and crispy; a good contrast to the soft beans.
8. Place the oven dish or casserole in the oven, preheated to 160 degrees, for 2 hours. In between, check regularly that the baked beans do not dry out - the texture should be thick, but not dry. If it gets too dry you can add more liquid. A little more of the sauce and syrup mixture works fine, or even some bacon fat. If you don't have that, you can also use water. When it is ready you can take the baked beans out of the oven. Let it cool down for a while so that it thickens even more. Enjoy it!
   • Baked beans make a delicious barbecue side dish - eat it with spare ribs, beef or chicken.

Method 2 of 3: Make baked beans with dried beans

1. Put 800 grams of dried beans in a large pan. Add cold water to the pan, about two liters should be enough. Let the beans soak in the fridge overnight. The beans will absorb the water and increase in volume.
   • If you don't have time to soak the beans overnight, you can quickly soften the beans in the oven. Preheat the oven to 160 degrees. Place the beans submerged in water in a saucepan with a tight-fitting lid. Place the pan in the oven until soft - about 1.5 to 2 hours.
2. The next day, put the beans with the water back in a pan. Put the pan on the stove and let it simmer for 1 to 2 hours. Optionally add 6-12 grams of salt to the beans. The beans are good if you can easily crush them between your fingers.
3. Drain the beans and keep the liquid. The moisture can be added to the baked beans later if they get too dry in the oven. This liquid is better than regular water, because the flavor of the beans is already in it.
4. Prepare the baked beans as discussed in the first section. Canned beans are usually a bit more moist, so with dried beans you may need to use a little more barbecue sauce, syrup, and the like to add a little more moisture to the relatively dry beans. Use common sense - check regularly to see if moisture needs to be added, so it won't dry out quickly.

Method 3 of 3: Variations

1. Instead of bacon, use pickled ham. The history of baked beans goes back a long way and is well documented - Indians made a similar dish long before the Europeans came ashore in North America. Older recipes often use pickled ham - a common ingredient at the time - instead of bacon. Salted ham, like bacon, is made from the fattier parts of a pig. If you want to give baked beans an old-fashioned twist, you can first cook the ham to make it less salt, then you can fry it in a pan, just like bacon. Process the ham in the dish in the same way as the bacon (see above).
   • If you really want to do it like the Indians, use venison instead of pork, and maple syrup instead of regular syrup.
2. Add some spiciness to the baked beans! Baked beans lend themselves well for a little extra spice, for example, chop a jalapeño pepper and fry it at the same time with the onion and the bell pepper. If you like it very spicy, you can also add some dried pepper or a spicy sauce to the baked beans while it is simmering. But watch out - not everyone benefits from this.
3. Experiment with the liquid ingredients. Adjust the ingredients and proportions as desired. If you don't like barbecue sauce, you can use ketchup, for example! You can dilute mustard with (or replace it with) Worcestershire sauce. Add some of your favorite spices - a pinch of cinnamon, for example, goes very well with baked beans, it gives the dish a kind of "autumn flavor". The possibilities are endless - create your own variation on this classic dish and share it with your friends!

Tips

• Eat baked beans with fries, with a baked potato or on toasted bread!
• Cheese also goes very well with it

Warnings

• Don't burn your fingers.
• Keep a close eye on the beans during preparation, as they can burn.

Necessities

• Large, deep frying pan
• Casserole
• Oven