For years I use to make Boston Baked Beans the hard way. You know what I mean. Going through the dried beans looking for small stones, and bad beans. Then there was that over night soaking etc..
One day, I came across a brand of baked beans I felt I could work with. Now I have two recipes for these types of beans. One is a heavier non smoked Boston Candy-“ized” Bean. The other is lighter but it is “smoked.” The recipe below is for the smoked/ lighter bean.
If you are into Texas style BBQ beans, then these are not for you.
This bean will have a light smoke flavour. Kind of like a sweet little accent. Years ago I made 50 gallons for an outside wedding. There was not a good gallon left to take home.
Enjoy!
Olds
Ingredients
To prepare this recipe, you’ll need 1 cup packed dark brown sugar, 6 oz. Molasses, 4 oz. Maple syrup – amber, 56 oz Bush Old Style Original Baked Beans, 1 Tablespoon Yellow Mustard, 2 Teaspoons Dry Mustard, 1 pound of quality Bacon and 1 good size Onion. Yellow or White. NO SWEET Onion.
Directions
- Take about 60% of the pound of bacon along with the onion that is pealed and cut into 6 pieces
- Place them into your smoker and smoke with Maple for 2 hours. Box temperature 225 °F
- Slice the smoked bacon and onion into bite size
- Add all other ingredients.
- Mix until you are sure the brown sugar is complete dissolved and the color is uniform.
- Take remaining (non-smoked) bacon and cover the top of the beans.
- Place in pre-heated oven 350 °F.
- Bake for 1 to 1 1/2 hours
- Stir your beans. Mix them up good. This is where you can lose it by over cooking the beans. There is nothing worse than to have a candy-“ized” dried out bean.
- Every 15 minutes, stir the beans again but you are also going to “test” the sauce every 15 minutes:
- Remove some of the sauce and place it in a glass bowl allowing it to cool.
- Spread it up the sides of the bowl, turn the bowl on its side and, if the sauce does not run down then your beans are done.
