This baked beans recipe is more work than some others, but the first time you taste slow-cooked baked beans, you’ll agree they’re worth the trouble.
Old-Fashioned Baked Beans
Slow-cooked baked beans - worth the trouble.
Ingredients
- 3 cups dried navy beans (about 1 1/2 lbs)
- ¾ lb salt pork
- 1 medium onion
- ¼ cup light brown sugar
- 2 tsp salt
- 2 tsp dry mustard
- 1 cup light molasses
Instructions
- Wash the beans the day before, discarding those that just won't do. Cover the beans with 2 quarts of cold water, cover, and refrigerate overnight.
- The following day, drain the beans and place them in a 6 quart kettle.
- Cover with 2 quarts of cold water.
- Bring to a boil, and reduce heat.
- Simmer, covered, for about 30 minutes.
- Drain (but keep the liquid).
- Preheat over to 300 degrees.
- Trim the rind from the salt pork, and cut the pork almost all the way through at 1/2 inch spacing.
- Place the onion in the bottom of a 4 quart bean pot or casserole dish.
- Add the beans, and bury the pork, with the cut side down, into the center of the beans.
- Heat that been liquid which you saved to boiling.
- Combine the rest of the ingredients, and pour in 1 cup of the boiling bean liquid to blend ingredients.
- Pour the mixture over the beans.
- Add about 1 1/2 cups of boiling liquid, just enough to cover the beans.
- Baked, covered, for 6 hours, stirring every hour or so to help the beans cook evenly.
- If beans seem dry after stirring, just add a little boiling water.
- If you like the top of the beans to brown, just remove the cover for the last 30 minutes or so of baking.
