LAURA LEE ALICE
COOKS
®
Actually, I can't take full credit for this recipe; it's mostly my husband's
creation (hence, the "Our"). It has changed over the last twenty or thirty
years to what it is now. BTW, for easy cleanup, this recipe can be done
entirely in a skillet.
About the Ingredients:
• Bacon: Use a good quality bacon. I don't use smoked, but if you like it,
use it.
• Onion: A sweet onion works great in this recipe if you have it. I have used
yellow or white onions: red onions aren't the best for this recipe.
• Pork and beans: You will need 2 (15-oz) cans or the equivalent.
• Ketchup
• Brown sugar: If you like your beans on the sweet side, add up to half cup
packed brown sugar. Otherwise, just add a generous quarter of a cup.
• Prepared mustard: No fancy stuff here; I use French's prepared mustard.
But if you like Dijon, use it.
Ingredients
• 5 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled leaving about 2 tsp
drippings in skillet
• 1 small onion, diced
• ½ cup ketchup
• 2 (15-oz) cans of pork and beans (only drain 1 can)
• ¼ to ½ cup packed brown sugar
• 1 Tbsp prepared mustard
Grease an 8-x-8 baking dish.
Instructions
1. Cook bacon on low-medium heat until golden brown; drain but leave two
teaspoons of drippings in the pan. Crumble bacon and set aside.
2. Sauté the onions on low-medium heat until almost tender. Add the bacon
and the rest of the ingredients to the pan**, stir gently and pour into the
prepared 8-x-8 baking dish.
3. Bake at 350°F for up to 30 minutes until bubbly and brown around the
edges. Be careful; the beans are very hot!
Notes
• When we first made this recipe, we didn't drain the pork and beans; we
just let the mixture cook on low heat in a skillet until it was the consistency
that we liked, but the beans were a little too soft (mushy). This recipe
worked much better. We also like the "crust" (caramelized sugar) that
forms along the edges.
• At this point you can also leave it in the skillet and let it cook slowly,
gently stirring until thickened to your taste.
Options
• For a more rustic flavor, add ¼ cup molasses.
• Add a small pinch of cayenne pepper.
• This recipe is easily doubled; just use an 11-x-7 baking dish or something
similar.
• If I'm serving this recipe with BBQ, I will add ½ to ¾ cup of the chopped
meat instead of the bacon.
The bacon gives the baked beans a lot of flavor. I prefer natural
uncured bacon because I like the way it bakes. Our simple method
for cooking bacon has minimal clean up. I bake it until it's almost
crispy but still pliable. For this recipe I cut it crosswise into ½-inch
strips. I like to see the pieces of bacon in my beans
Tips
• Instead of using pork and beans, you can use regular canned beans
(two 15-oz cans for the basic recipe) such as navy, great northern or
cannellini.
• I've also mixed them for more interest (or if I don't have enough of
one kind). You will need to drain one can and add an additional
one-fourth cup ketchup and one-fourth cup packed brown sugar in
addition to the ingredients listed in the recipe.
• You can also use cooked dried beans. A typical 15-ounce can of
cooked beans (drained) yields about 1½ cups of beans. To get a
similar amount of cooked beans, use ¾ cup dried beans. Soaking
dried beans overnight can reduce cooking time and improve texture.
Or, bring the dried beans, covered with 3 inches of water, to a boil;
cover; turn off heat and let sit for 1½ hours. Replace water and
resume cooking until they reach desired doneness
Complimentary
Recipes
Recipes are like stories; they can change from person to person. Everyone has their idea of how a recipe should be, even
though it may have changed from the original. We will never know the true author of the original recipe, regardless of
what some may say. That's why I go back and look through the oldest cookbooks that I can find. Sometimes it's not the
recipe in the books that I find, but the tiny pieces of handwritten recipes and newspaper articles that are stuck within
the pages. That's where the real story is, finding those simple Southern recipes. -Mac