I've tried to make baked beans from scratch & have never been happy with them. One really lazy day, I opened some cans & threw this together. The family really, really liked them.

1 lg (28 oz.) can baked beans (I use Van Camp's)
1 regular (16 oz.) can pork n' beans
Onion (I used dried onions a lot of the time)
Bacon
Famous Dave's Sassy Chipotle BBQ sauce

Dice the (fresh) onions & saute w/ bacon. (Dried onions work just fine in this recipe. If you use them, then you only need to precook the bacon.) Pour off excess fat & stir into a baking dish with the beans. Add BBQ sauce to taste. (Guesstimating that I use about 1/2 c. of sauce for that am't of beans. Maybe a little more.) Cover & bake.

The inexpensive baked beans are fine for this...don't need to get any of the fancy premium brands.

I don't like using processed foods but it seems that I can't make decent baked beans otherwise. They do taste really good and are stupid easy to make plus being inexpensive.

Here's a fun dish to make for a potluck. I don't know if it is the "best" baked bean recipe out there, but the mix of colors is a little unusual and it is good.

Calico Baked Beans for a Crowd
from "More With Less Cookbook"

2 cups green limas, cooked and drained. Or use black beans or blackeyed peas if you don't like limas.
2 cups large limas (butter beans) or even great northern beans
2 cups red kidney beans
2 cups pork and beans

Fry 8 (or less) slices of bacon or 1 cup leftover ham bits or 1/2 lb. sausage of some type. I just add 2 TBLSP fake bacon bits! Cook this up and drain off excess fat!

1.5 cups onion, cut up.
Sautee in the oil from the bacon or use a TBLSP of olive oil. Now add the sauce ingredients to the pan and cook for 5 minutes. Then stir in the beans.

Sauce:
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 tsp. of salt (or less to taste)
1 tsp. dry mustard
1 clove minced garlic (or more to taste, lol!)
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup ketchup.

Pour over beans, Bake uncovered 1.5 hours, adding additional liquid if beans become too dry.

I know Sharon/Chase does "cheater" baked beans and so do I, and they start with canned beans, just like CdL.

I've made them from scratch, starting with dried beans, but I've never liked them any better than I do when I start with a can of Bush's Baked Beans, flavor of your choice. I drain the beans a bit, then add about 1/4 cup of catsup, a tablespoon or so of the neon yellow mustard and maybe 1/4 cup of brown sugar. Bacon if you are so inclined, I usually do the beans first, then add the crisp bacon to the top so it gets cooked all the way through.

I put everything in the crockpot on low for 4 or 5 hours and cook it until it's sticky and thick.

No matter what recipes I try, I always come back to this basic method, it's what everyone in my family likes. As CdL says, they are stupid easy and they're cheap!

In the alternative, I've made these many times, and people are always happy with them too, although I think hamburger in beans is pretty much "over kill" on the protein level!

Cowboy Beans

1/2 pound ground beef
1/2 pound bacon, diced
1 medium onion, chopped
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup ketchup
1/4 cup barbecue sauce
1 tablespoon prepared mustard
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1 can (16 ounces) pork and beans, undrained
1 can (16 ounces) kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 can (16 ounces) great northern beans, rinsed and drained

In a large skillet, cook beef, bacon and onion until meat is done and onion is tender. Drain any fat. Combine all remaining ingredients except beans. Add to meat mixture; mix well. Stir in beans. Place in a greased 2-1/2-qt. baking dish. Cover and bake at 350ð for 1 hour or until heated through. Yield: 8-10 servings.

I love baked beans, I ought to make some. I've even been known to eat them cold on a slice of bread for breakfast.

Annie

I make killer beans from scratch....but to feed 20 you would need 2 recipes and 2 bean pots and lots of patience.
Get a food service sized can of Bush's beans, dump into a roaster and add
one onion chopped
1/4 pound or bacon....snip the raw bacon with scissors into small pieces,
1/2 cup catsup
2/3 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup dark grainy mustard
1/4 cup maple syrup...or dark molasses if you like a molassesey beans
Bake uncovered for 1 1/2 hours at 350 without a lid.

You know actually that should be a large can of pork and beans, (like the quart size), not two cups. But 2 cups would do. I don't have pork and beans on hand, I would just use some navy beans or some other type of bean because the recipe already has a lot of pork in it. Fill in the liquid with a dab more of the sauce indgredients. Or use the pork and beans, most "homeade" recipe start with that anyway. I always keep V-8 juice on hand, it's my secret liquid to add to tomatoey stuff instead of water. Works great if your chili is a little dry too.

I made these yesterday. Tasty and very easy :)

Here is a link that might be useful: Pioneer Womans Best Baked Beans

I don't care for the cowboy type beans with the meat, as is common in the west. Overkill is a good way to describe it. Too much protein for a side dish, to my taste. Like mac 'n cheese as a side dish. No, I prefer it as a main dish.

The best baked beans I make start with the B&M brand canned beans, then doctored with more onion and garlic and homemade BBQ sauce, but I've done them straight out of the can, baked uncovered for 30 minutes and had people rave about them. Try them instead of the Bush's, they are soooooo much better it isn't funny.

Thanks to everyone for your replies. I will doctor canned beans for sure! I like them cooked down and sticky, somewhat sweet. And I love the bacon.

seagrass

Here is the recipe I always use. I use my own canned chili sauce but a commercial product works well too. I like Willies Chili Sauce These are definitely sticky!

Baked Beans

1 Can kidney beans drained
1 Can lima beans drained
2 Can Brown Beans (Pork and Beans)
1 1/2 Cup of chili sauce
2 Tbl brown sugar
1 Tbl Dijon mustard
1 Tbl Worcestershire sauce
2 Tbl molasses
3 Slice bacon cut in half (Note if doing them in a crock pot I would cut the bacon in pieces and fry)

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. In a medium baking dish, mix kidney beans,
lima beans, brown beans, chili sauce, brown sugar, Dijon mustard,
Worcestershire sauce and molasses. Top with bacon. Bake 1 hour in the
preheated oven, until thick and bubbly.

Here is a link that might be useful: Willies Chili Sauce

I forgot to say that sometimes I add either some Penzey's dried jalapenos or fresh diced sweet pepper, either green or red. Prefer the red pepper. Or some red pepper flakes. Sometimes some garlic. Depends on how ambitious I feel & what I have on hand.

And never, never, never do I add ground beef. I agree that it's overkill plus, IMO, it ruins the beans. Won't touch them at potlucks if they have burger in 'em.

Aside, for a just-out-of-the-can product, we really like the Bush's Grillin' Beans, the 'Steakhouse Tradition' recipe. (They have several different versions; don't bother with the 'Texas Ranchero' recipe-it tastes like plain old, cheaper chili beans.)

I've taken these to a potluck for 15. Pleanty! And lots requested the recipe.

Paula Deen's Baked Beans with pineapple, etc.

4 (16-ounce) cans baked beans
1 (20-ounce) can crushed pineapple, drained
1 cup molasses
1 cup BBQ sauce
2 tablespoon yellow or brown mustard
5 slices cooked bacon, crumbled
1 (6-ounce) can french-fried onions, crushed
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In large bowl, mix together beans, pineapple, molasses, BBQ sauce, mustard, 1/4 of the bacon, and 1/4 of the onions. Add some salt and pepper, to taste. Pour beans in 9 by 13-inch casserole dish and sprinkle remaining crushed onions and bacon on top. Cook in oven for 1 hour or until beans brown and bubble. Serve warm.

Oh yeah, I love sweet sticky beans and I like them with molasses or maple syrup added to them too, so if you have some maple syrup or some sorghum on hand, dump in some of that, to taste.

Definitely have to make some baked beans now...

Annie

Try the B&M brand beans. Really good. I tried Bush's and won't go back there, altho the BBQ flavor Bush's were a bit better than the regular.

Thanks again to each of you. I certainly have lots to work with here!! I'll have to keep the heat toned down as this will be a traditional, rather tame crowd. But as far as I know, no vegetarians, so bacon has the green light.

seagrass

Every time I see a baked bean recipe on this forum which starts with "open a can of beans" I wonder if it was posted by someone who looks down their nose at cake mix.

I'm bad. :-)

Jim

Naw, I'll use a cake mix, but like everything else, never without some doctoring up!

Somewhat naughty, I'd agree, Jim lol.

I have no personal policies against using a can or a mix but I have to like the texture and taste of the product. Many convenience foods are too sweet, too salty, too gloppy, too mushy etc. for me. Canned beans, however, are usually quite acceptable.

I love to eat, and that's why I cook. But I'd rather garden than cook and as I get older I want to spend less time in the kitchen and more in the garden.

seagrass

I almost always make my own beans in the crockpot. I greatly prefer the taste. But with baked beans, there are so many other flavor components going on that it is simply not necessary. If anything, it is a cost savings to make your own beans, that's it. Canned beans are one of the wonders of the world, lol!

Well, Jim, I wouldn't use a cake mix for any purpose, I don't like the taste much, but the texture is what really puts me off, along with the list of things I can't pronounce.

The texture of canned beans, though, are much like any other cooked bean, so they are acceptable to me.

The sodium level is somewhat concerning and they do contain high fructose corn syrup, which I try to avoid because of the calories, but the ingredient list for B&M baked beans has:

"baked small pea beans in sauce containing water, sugar, molasses, high fructose corn syrup, salt, modified corn starch, dried onion, spice, dried garlic, natural flavor"

Not a single ingredient that I can't understand and nothing that's clearly chemical in nature. No preservatives, red/yellow/blue dyes, stabilizers, emulsifiers or things I can't identify.

So, I can't lump canned beans or frozen vegetables in with cake mixes, sorry.

I do usually make my own beans and use leftover beans to make my own refried beans, bean burritos or baked beans. For lunch I had bean soup made with a ham bone and fresh kale, so probably not baked beans with those leftovers, it's the kale that wouldn't hold up...

Annie

About the only bean I really like is kidney beans. Some fresh green beans, properly cooked (in bacon of course) are good. But I've never liked pork & beans. I don't like soupy mush. I've often wondered about making a baked bean with kidney beans but no motivation to experiment. I have to admit the Pit Boys have a recipe for Barbecue Baked Beans I'm really interested in trying. This looks good! I'd likely add some things like bell pepper, maybe some celery, but these look great by themselves. Not too difficult either.

Their Redneck Beans look good too.

Razorback Smoked Beans sound like something I could go for too.
"Best in the West" use a mix of bean and also has the ground beef in it.

Well, Annie, I feel about beans as you do about cake.

It can probably be explained by the fact that I'm not especially fond of cake and one kind is about as good as another to me. I'm not aware of any significant difference between scratch, mix and ready make cake. I never bake a cake. I will eat cake when it is offered but I won't know if it is scratch or mix. I don't go out of my way to get cake.

On the other hand, beans are a favorite food of mine and I do notice the differences between canned and homemade baked beans. Canned beans have a mushy texture. The sauce of canned beaans is slightlly slimy. Homemade beans, if carefully prepared, have just the right balance of bite and tenderness. There is no way to achieve that by "doctoring" canned beans.

Concerning doctoring, there is not much need for that, except to assuage the guilt of using a shortcut method. Now I'm in real trouble! I am bad. :-) Most brands of canned beans are offered in several flavors, which cover the bases, flavorwise.

Having said all that, I admit I do eat canned beans. They are a pretty good product, as is cake mix. Just not the equal of the real thing.

Jim

Famous Dave's Sassy Chipotle BBQ sauce
We just ate at Famous Dave's last night with the Harley Group.
New restaurant here just opened two weeks ago. Great food

Linda

I do not like baked beans but the few times I have had homemade- and yes, 100% homemade from dried beans, I have liked them. I also like homemade Cowboy beans a lot.
But a can of baked beans? The piece of bacon is the only part I'll eat.
I prefer the bb's not to be sickly sweet or gloppy.

No, Jim, I don't have a problem with cake mixes. They're inexpensive & a great convenience. Especially when I'm busy or just pooped but the old sweet tooth is nagging me. We also keep brownie mix, Jello type cheesecake mix & blueberry muffin mixes in the pantry.

Cooking is something that I enjoy, sometimes. But I've been cooking a lot longer than any of the other stuff that I enjoy doing and, after having cooked for so long, I find myself being just plain worn out of cooking. I think that's part of the reason that I hang out on this forum--getting new ideas & recipes to try to keep it interesting & something that I want to do.

So, the convenience mixes are there to get us by during the times when I'm doing more interesting things like working out in my woodshop, tackling a remodeling project, gardening, preserving produce or fishing...

Jim, I think you've put your finger on the real point: we'll take the time with what we care about. For me, beans are beans, and the difference between canned and dry isn't worth the time and effort, as long as I wash off the glup on canned beans. But cake, that's completely different, because I like cake, good cake, much more than I like beans. The difference in work is slight, since you still have to add eggs, and wash the pans, etc., while the difference in the final product is enormous. To me.

I've gotta weigh in on the canned beans vs cake mix.
for one thing, cooking beans takes a lot more time than making a cake from scratch, granted not much work time, you can't say "guess I'll have baked beans for dinner" at 3 in the afternoon and make them from scratch.
And if your beans are mushy, you are buying the wrong brand.
As for "doctoring" them as a way to assuage guilt....not at all. I rinse the canned glop off the beans and add my own sauce. Also where I live I can buy a quart of navy beans un seasoned and without sauce. They are just cooked beans in a 2 quart jar. They are many times more expensive than dry beans and you don't have the variety, but if you get the urge for baked beans at noon, you can have them by dinner.

The difference in the time to make a cake from a mix and one from scratch is roughly 5 minutes more to make it from scratch. The difference between doctored up bush's or B and M beans and dry beans soaked and boiled and them baked with molasses, onions, dry mustard and a bacon end baked for 5 hours in a bean pot is huge.
Linda C

There are still all those ingredients that came from a laboratory. Grandma used to tell me that if it wasn't food 50 years ago, it's not food now. So we still have the added chemical ingredients, which I dislike and avoid whenever I can. As I mentioned, that can of baked beans doesn't have anything in it that I can't pronounce.

I love beans. Nearly all beans, any beans. I like them in soup or in burritos, I make a pot of pinto beans and cornbread and that can be a meal for me for a couple of days and I'm happy. I've been known to eat last night's cold baked beans in a sandwich for breakfast, love 'em.

Maybe that's it, I love 'em all. I prefer homemade to canned, of course, but I don't find commercially canned beans to be any "mushier" than my homecanned ones. Of course, I come from Michigan, we grow a lot of beans and are the major supplier of dried beans to Europe. 90% of our cranberry beans go to Italy, and I think I eat a good portion of the remaining 10%, LOL. I don't think I've ever met a bean I didn't like except those big, dry and mealy Limas.

Cake I can take or leave, even the homemade ones. Like cheesecake, it's OK, but I'm relatively apathetic. Cake mix cake, though, has that metallic flavor and feels like a sponge in my mouth, until it falls apart into those spongy little crumbs. As I've mentioned, Ashley actually likes that texture, Shaun mentioned that she did too, and I don't think that someone else using them indicates a moral deficiency of any kind. Just don't argue that they are cheaper or faster, because they aren't and the savings in time is only a few minutes over making a scratch cake.

So, my cake baking will remain relegated to weddings and holidays, Ashley can make Duncan Hines cupcakes if she chooses to and frost them with Nutella. I'll take seconds on the baked beans, any way you can make them, although I prefer them with maple syrup and some nice smoky bacon.

Annie

Oy, this bean thread is making me so hungry. I was amazed at the variety of types of baked beans from Bush that they had in the grocery. I got some Texas Ranchero ones en lieu of chili sauce, and I plan on adding my own frozen great northerns and maybe one other type, maybe I'll try B&M. I wanted to do kidney beans but BF can't eat too many of those due to his gout tendencies, and I already fed him one batch this week.

BTW, what besides cornbread and hotdogs/hamburgers do you think goes with baked beans. Potato salad? Cooked greens? I was thinking coleslaw but that might send BF over the edge with gas, lol!

Anyone do this?

"Soaking Beans
The Utah State University Cooperative Extension reports that adding baking soda to the soaking water for dry beans helps soften the beans so they'll cook faster. Use 3 qts. of water and a pinch of baking soda for every cup of dried beans and soak overnight. Drain off the soaking solution and add fresh water before cooking."

dcarch

Nah, I don't bother. Grandma used to soak beans with baking soda, but I havne't really noticed that much difference, especially when I toss them in the crockpot and let them cook all day.

L, I think baked beans go with everything. I believe they are a stape for Chase/Sharon with ham and potato salad, and we always had them with BBQ'd chicken or ham sandwiches. Mostly we had them as the "starch" component of our meal, but sometimes they WERE the meal.

Annie

Baked beans , my cheater style, are a staple at all family celebrations, usually with ham, turkey and mac and cheese.

By way of contrition my cheaters include limas and kidneys, they aren't jut doctored Bush style beans.... and I do have one mixed cake recipe for Lemon cake that I usually serve with!

Baked beans go with hamburgers, hot dogs, bratwurst....with a ham dinner and a chicken dinner, with steaks on the grill, with BBQ sandwiches. They go with a platter of deli sandwiches, or fried chicken....but I don't think I would serve them as a side to lasagna.

That bit about adding baking soda to cooking beans is a kitchen myth, as is the tale about not adding salt nor cooking in tomatoes.

And Annie you can have all my black eyed peas and I'll take your big fat limas....and your corona beans and you canelli beans!!
Linda c

Posted by lindac -------That bit about adding baking soda to cooking beans is a kitchen myth, as is the tale about not adding salt nor cooking in tomatoes. ----------Linda c "

Very interesting view.

As a matter of fact, many marrow beans are sold with a packet of soaking tablets which contains baking soda.

dcarch

Here is a link that might be useful: A fake study?

As I said a kitchen myth...basic water may help beans cook more quickly but studies report it destroys thiamine.
I could post a link but there are many....many.
You can google it as well as I can.....

LindaC, I like the cannellini beans too, and the corona beans and one of my new favorites, the mayacoba. I like the cranberry beans and the black beans and the pintos and the kidney beans. I like all the split peas and lentils too, I just don't like the big limas.

I'll eat the little ones, though.

Annie