DA BEENZ
More with the documenting of BBQ stuff.
First, a disclaimer: I'm really not a fan of traditional BBQ beans. I'm far more into savory when it comes to beanage (most BBQ beans are sugarbombs) and I can't stand ham. "Pork and Beans" = eeeyugh. But as I've gotten older I've started to appreciate at least some sweetness in the side dishes and I recognize that it's a BBQ staple that I should know how to make. So I came up with a recipe that leaves out the bits I don't like, and keeps in bits recommended to me by my dad and others whose BBQ I trust.
Cooking baked beans during an 18-hour brisket or pork shoulder smoking session makes it easy to get a ton of flavor by using the drippings. Alternatively, you can cook them in the oven without a smoker running or even a BBQ happening at all and they're still pretty dang good. The sweet-sauce part of the recipe is very open to experimentation as well, making it a fun process to tweak and re-tweak over time.
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Equipment:
A big-ass bean pot, preferably cast iron (dutch oven) or an oven-safe boiling pot. A non-stick one if you don't have cast iron is great, as long as it's oven-safe nonstick. If you're going to do the oven method (no BBQ) then make sure it has a functional, oven-safe lid.
If you're using a smoker to run an overnight pork shoulder or brisket, then get a nice big aluminum-foil drip tray. Big and tough enough to hold all the beans and much extra liquid.
Measuring cups & spoons, spatula to wipe sticky stuff out of them, a slotted spoon or spatula, hot pads, all that kinda jazz.
Ingredients:
2 tbsp of kosher salt
1 lb of dried beans, small types (read more below)
8-12 oz of bacon
1 very large or two small onions, preferably yellow (sweet).
2-3 jalapenos, normal sized ones (not teeny, not monstroso)
2 tbsp of minced garlic
One 32oz box of chicken stock (I'm too lazy to make my own)
1/4 cup molasses
1/3 cup of a decent honey (I like blackberry honey for this)
1/2 cup of brown sugar (more if you have a sweet tooth)
2 tbsp yellow mustard
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
A few good shakes of crazy-hot hot sauce (habanero or better)
--or--
2 tbsp of a weaksauce hot sauce (like Cholula or Tapatio or such).
1 tbsp of the same BBQ dry rub that you're using in the BBQ you're cooking. If you're not cooking a BBQ, then use any decent dry-rub spice blend you like the flavor of.
1 cup of good ol' ketchup.
1/2 cup of Heinz 57 sauce (or your favorite steak sauce)
-Optional-
1/4 to 1/2 cup TOTAL of diced southwest greens of your choice: bell peppers, jicama, tomatillo, etc. Don't go overboard here; you're not making salsa. You're making baked beans. But if you have a favorite southwest veggie, here's where it goes.
-----
How to make 'em:
1. Acquire and soak the beans. Do this at least 8 hours before you start your smoker run, aka "the night before". I'm talking about dry beans in the bag, not canned. Using a blend of types is recommended for a variety in texture and flavor. My favorite combo is a trio: white navy beans, pinto beans and black eyed peas in a 2:1:1 ratio. Experiment! Try to target about one pound of beans total.
Soak them for at least 8 hours in a bowl of room temperature water with 2-3 tablespoons of salt dissolved in. The salt helps keep the beans from splitting as they re-hydrate. When done soaking rinse them very well. The better a rinse job, the less 'windy' of a bean dish will result. :) Leave them in a strainer to dry while you work on the next steps.
2. Pre-prep:
First the veggies. finely dice (heck, mince) all the onion, set it aside on its own. De-seed and clean the jalapenos, dice. If you have the optional extra veggies dice 'em up too, mix in with the jalapenos. If you're not using pre-minced garlic, peel your cloves and chop 'em up yourself.
Second, the sauce. Mix the Heinz 57, ketchup, mustard, honey, molasses, vinegar, BBQ rub, brown sugar and hot sauce together in a bowl. Saran wrap it and put it back in the fridge.
3. Time to saute. Here's where I avoid the ham but keep all the flavor: Bacon! Nature's meat candy. :9 Depending on how much you like bacon, use as little as 8oz and as much as 16oz. If you're using the oven-only method, err on the side of more bacon.
Chop it up into little bits, like 1" squares or less. Put it in your beanpot over medium heat and cook it like you would breakfast bacon, stirring as you go. Render as much fat out of it as you can; get the little bits nice and crisp. Then using a slotted spoon remove all the bacon into a paper-towel-lined bowl, leaving as much of the bacon grease in the pot as you can. Try to not eat too much of the bacon. :)
Turn up the heat a little bit and dump all the onion bits into the bacon fat in your beanpot. Stir them a bit and let them cook down at least 5 minutes or more -- until they soften and clear out a bit. Then add the garlic, stir for another minute. Finally, add in all your minced peppers and veggies. Stir-fry them all in the bacon fat for a few more minutes. Now dump all those crispy bacon bits back in. Once more, don't pick out and eat too many of those wonderful bacon bits.
4. Time to do the primary bean cook! Pour in the entire 32oz box of chicken stock atop the veggie and bacon mix. If anything is stuck to the bottom of the pan, stir/pry it loose and mix it up into the stock. Add one more cup of water and then dump in all your beans from the strainer. Stir well and bring to a boil. Once it boils, drop it to a medium simmer (slight bubbling/motion), but not too high.
Let it simmer, LID OFF, for a full hour. Stir it a few times just to make sure nothing gets stuck to the bottom. Once every 15 minutes or so should be fine.
----
Here's where we diverge into two paths. If you're going to do the oven only method, skip down one section to part #8. If you're doing an overnight smoker run of brisket or pork shoulder, stay in this part.
Start your smoking session as the beans start their hour long simmer in step #4 back there. That way be the time you get here, things will have been in the grill a full hour and will be at stable temps, with first-smoke and water-drip done with. Now, on with the show:
5. Turn off the stovetop. Give things a good, scrape-y stir; make sure nothing's stuck to the pot so you won't leave any flavor behind. Now pour it all into your sturdy, aluminum-foil BBQ tray. Haul it out and put it below the meat in the smoker -- between the meat and the water-barrier (if your smoker uses a water tray). You want the meat to drip into the beans as it cooks!
6. Let your smoker run at its normal 215-220F range and leave it alone. When you have to open the smoker to check water tray levels and/or refuel the firebox, give the beans a good stir. After at least three hours of cooking check that the beans aren't drying out! They should still be very liquid-ish due to the extra meat drippings and the high humidity of a properly water-tray-equipped smoker. If they stay runny, leave them in, uncovered for anywhere from 4-8 hours. The longer you can manage this, the better! By then they should have thickened up to where you don't want to lose any more fluid. Once you've reached this point, it's time to seal the beans up with tinfoil across the top of the tray so they can't evaporate any more, and then move them out from underneath the meat to another part of the smoker -- or into your oven inside at 250F or so if you don't have room to leave them in there.
If for any reason they dry out too fast, you're not keeping the smoker humid enough. As you refill the water tray, add a little more water and/or chicken stock to the beans similarly to keep them hydrated. You don't want them to thicken up until at least 4 hours have passed.
Once sealed in tin foil, you can leave them in the 210-220F smoker for the remainder of the 18 hour brisket run. If you instead transferred them to the oven at 250F, cook them until you've got a good 6-8 hours total (between smoker time and oven time), then drop to warming temp. Sample them any time you want! Too chewy? Add a little liquid if needed and leave 'em in longer. Starting to get too mushy? Get 'em out of the heat and leave them at 'warming' temp, sealed up.
7. Serve! Not much to this. Open foil, provide big spoon or ladle. Eat in copious amounts alongside the brisket.
----
8. Ok, so no BBQ for you. It's easier to time it this way, at least. While your beans are doing their hour long simmer on the stovetop, pre-heat your oven to 300F. Once the hour simmer is over stir/scrape them well to make sure nothing stuck to the bottom of the pot, put the lid on the bean pot and put them in the oven. Set a four hour timer. Stir once every half-hour or less; not much attention is needed at this stage.
9. When the timer goes off, remove the lid and give a very thorough stirring. Leave them in the oven another 45 mins to 1 hour with that lid off. Check and stir every 10-15 minutes. Once they've thickened up to the consistency you like, they're done.
10. Serve and eat, as above. They should still be pretty awesome, but not quite as creamy (from the slightly faster cook) and not quite as meaty (lack of BBQ drippin's).
-----
Like a good chili, you can put 'em in a crock pot to keep them warm during the BBQ. You could also leave them to simmer on the stove in the beanpot as long as you don't forget the occasional stir. If you're a room-temp-beans type just let 'em cool down in a serving bowl with a lid on it. It all comes down to personal preference. If you let them cool down be sure to tag-and-bag any leftovers within an hour so they don't get funky. They'll keep fine in the fridge for a week, or for a lot longer than that if you freeze them. Reheat them in the microwave or a pot on the stove. If they've dried out a bit or got too thick, add a small amount of water or chicken stock when you re-heat them -- or if you want yet more sweet, some BBQ sauce.
--------
It sounds like a lot of work. It really isn't. It's a lot of time but the actual prep/cook/stir tasks added up are very minimal and mesh well with all the other prep going on during a good overnight BBQ run. Your effort will be widely rewarded. And you can then mess with the sauce ingredients to your hearts content each time you do it, until you find a flavor that's uniquely yours.
Just don't do what I did during my BBQ last week -- and accidentally set the oven to 350 instead of 'warm' at the very last stage, forget you left them in there and burn the crap out of all the beans before anybody gets any. I ruined all but a cup or two of them, and filled my kitchen with smoke. Even so, the folks who sampled the small amount that didn't burn seemed to rather enjoy them. D'oh. :)
First, a disclaimer: I'm really not a fan of traditional BBQ beans. I'm far more into savory when it comes to beanage (most BBQ beans are sugarbombs) and I can't stand ham. "Pork and Beans" = eeeyugh. But as I've gotten older I've started to appreciate at least some sweetness in the side dishes and I recognize that it's a BBQ staple that I should know how to make. So I came up with a recipe that leaves out the bits I don't like, and keeps in bits recommended to me by my dad and others whose BBQ I trust.
Cooking baked beans during an 18-hour brisket or pork shoulder smoking session makes it easy to get a ton of flavor by using the drippings. Alternatively, you can cook them in the oven without a smoker running or even a BBQ happening at all and they're still pretty dang good. The sweet-sauce part of the recipe is very open to experimentation as well, making it a fun process to tweak and re-tweak over time.
-----
Equipment:
A big-ass bean pot, preferably cast iron (dutch oven) or an oven-safe boiling pot. A non-stick one if you don't have cast iron is great, as long as it's oven-safe nonstick. If you're going to do the oven method (no BBQ) then make sure it has a functional, oven-safe lid.
If you're using a smoker to run an overnight pork shoulder or brisket, then get a nice big aluminum-foil drip tray. Big and tough enough to hold all the beans and much extra liquid.
Measuring cups & spoons, spatula to wipe sticky stuff out of them, a slotted spoon or spatula, hot pads, all that kinda jazz.
Ingredients:
2 tbsp of kosher salt
1 lb of dried beans, small types (read more below)
8-12 oz of bacon
1 very large or two small onions, preferably yellow (sweet).
2-3 jalapenos, normal sized ones (not teeny, not monstroso)
2 tbsp of minced garlic
One 32oz box of chicken stock (I'm too lazy to make my own)
1/4 cup molasses
1/3 cup of a decent honey (I like blackberry honey for this)
1/2 cup of brown sugar (more if you have a sweet tooth)
2 tbsp yellow mustard
1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
A few good shakes of crazy-hot hot sauce (habanero or better)
--or--
2 tbsp of a weaksauce hot sauce (like Cholula or Tapatio or such).
1 tbsp of the same BBQ dry rub that you're using in the BBQ you're cooking. If you're not cooking a BBQ, then use any decent dry-rub spice blend you like the flavor of.
1 cup of good ol' ketchup.
1/2 cup of Heinz 57 sauce (or your favorite steak sauce)
-Optional-
1/4 to 1/2 cup TOTAL of diced southwest greens of your choice: bell peppers, jicama, tomatillo, etc. Don't go overboard here; you're not making salsa. You're making baked beans. But if you have a favorite southwest veggie, here's where it goes.
-----
How to make 'em:
1. Acquire and soak the beans. Do this at least 8 hours before you start your smoker run, aka "the night before". I'm talking about dry beans in the bag, not canned. Using a blend of types is recommended for a variety in texture and flavor. My favorite combo is a trio: white navy beans, pinto beans and black eyed peas in a 2:1:1 ratio. Experiment! Try to target about one pound of beans total.
Soak them for at least 8 hours in a bowl of room temperature water with 2-3 tablespoons of salt dissolved in. The salt helps keep the beans from splitting as they re-hydrate. When done soaking rinse them very well. The better a rinse job, the less 'windy' of a bean dish will result. :) Leave them in a strainer to dry while you work on the next steps.
2. Pre-prep:
First the veggies. finely dice (heck, mince) all the onion, set it aside on its own. De-seed and clean the jalapenos, dice. If you have the optional extra veggies dice 'em up too, mix in with the jalapenos. If you're not using pre-minced garlic, peel your cloves and chop 'em up yourself.
Second, the sauce. Mix the Heinz 57, ketchup, mustard, honey, molasses, vinegar, BBQ rub, brown sugar and hot sauce together in a bowl. Saran wrap it and put it back in the fridge.
3. Time to saute. Here's where I avoid the ham but keep all the flavor: Bacon! Nature's meat candy. :9 Depending on how much you like bacon, use as little as 8oz and as much as 16oz. If you're using the oven-only method, err on the side of more bacon.
Chop it up into little bits, like 1" squares or less. Put it in your beanpot over medium heat and cook it like you would breakfast bacon, stirring as you go. Render as much fat out of it as you can; get the little bits nice and crisp. Then using a slotted spoon remove all the bacon into a paper-towel-lined bowl, leaving as much of the bacon grease in the pot as you can. Try to not eat too much of the bacon. :)
Turn up the heat a little bit and dump all the onion bits into the bacon fat in your beanpot. Stir them a bit and let them cook down at least 5 minutes or more -- until they soften and clear out a bit. Then add the garlic, stir for another minute. Finally, add in all your minced peppers and veggies. Stir-fry them all in the bacon fat for a few more minutes. Now dump all those crispy bacon bits back in. Once more, don't pick out and eat too many of those wonderful bacon bits.
4. Time to do the primary bean cook! Pour in the entire 32oz box of chicken stock atop the veggie and bacon mix. If anything is stuck to the bottom of the pan, stir/pry it loose and mix it up into the stock. Add one more cup of water and then dump in all your beans from the strainer. Stir well and bring to a boil. Once it boils, drop it to a medium simmer (slight bubbling/motion), but not too high.
Let it simmer, LID OFF, for a full hour. Stir it a few times just to make sure nothing gets stuck to the bottom. Once every 15 minutes or so should be fine.
----
Here's where we diverge into two paths. If you're going to do the oven only method, skip down one section to part #8. If you're doing an overnight smoker run of brisket or pork shoulder, stay in this part.
Start your smoking session as the beans start their hour long simmer in step #4 back there. That way be the time you get here, things will have been in the grill a full hour and will be at stable temps, with first-smoke and water-drip done with. Now, on with the show:
5. Turn off the stovetop. Give things a good, scrape-y stir; make sure nothing's stuck to the pot so you won't leave any flavor behind. Now pour it all into your sturdy, aluminum-foil BBQ tray. Haul it out and put it below the meat in the smoker -- between the meat and the water-barrier (if your smoker uses a water tray). You want the meat to drip into the beans as it cooks!
6. Let your smoker run at its normal 215-220F range and leave it alone. When you have to open the smoker to check water tray levels and/or refuel the firebox, give the beans a good stir. After at least three hours of cooking check that the beans aren't drying out! They should still be very liquid-ish due to the extra meat drippings and the high humidity of a properly water-tray-equipped smoker. If they stay runny, leave them in, uncovered for anywhere from 4-8 hours. The longer you can manage this, the better! By then they should have thickened up to where you don't want to lose any more fluid. Once you've reached this point, it's time to seal the beans up with tinfoil across the top of the tray so they can't evaporate any more, and then move them out from underneath the meat to another part of the smoker -- or into your oven inside at 250F or so if you don't have room to leave them in there.
If for any reason they dry out too fast, you're not keeping the smoker humid enough. As you refill the water tray, add a little more water and/or chicken stock to the beans similarly to keep them hydrated. You don't want them to thicken up until at least 4 hours have passed.
Once sealed in tin foil, you can leave them in the 210-220F smoker for the remainder of the 18 hour brisket run. If you instead transferred them to the oven at 250F, cook them until you've got a good 6-8 hours total (between smoker time and oven time), then drop to warming temp. Sample them any time you want! Too chewy? Add a little liquid if needed and leave 'em in longer. Starting to get too mushy? Get 'em out of the heat and leave them at 'warming' temp, sealed up.
7. Serve! Not much to this. Open foil, provide big spoon or ladle. Eat in copious amounts alongside the brisket.
----
8. Ok, so no BBQ for you. It's easier to time it this way, at least. While your beans are doing their hour long simmer on the stovetop, pre-heat your oven to 300F. Once the hour simmer is over stir/scrape them well to make sure nothing stuck to the bottom of the pot, put the lid on the bean pot and put them in the oven. Set a four hour timer. Stir once every half-hour or less; not much attention is needed at this stage.
9. When the timer goes off, remove the lid and give a very thorough stirring. Leave them in the oven another 45 mins to 1 hour with that lid off. Check and stir every 10-15 minutes. Once they've thickened up to the consistency you like, they're done.
10. Serve and eat, as above. They should still be pretty awesome, but not quite as creamy (from the slightly faster cook) and not quite as meaty (lack of BBQ drippin's).
-----
Like a good chili, you can put 'em in a crock pot to keep them warm during the BBQ. You could also leave them to simmer on the stove in the beanpot as long as you don't forget the occasional stir. If you're a room-temp-beans type just let 'em cool down in a serving bowl with a lid on it. It all comes down to personal preference. If you let them cool down be sure to tag-and-bag any leftovers within an hour so they don't get funky. They'll keep fine in the fridge for a week, or for a lot longer than that if you freeze them. Reheat them in the microwave or a pot on the stove. If they've dried out a bit or got too thick, add a small amount of water or chicken stock when you re-heat them -- or if you want yet more sweet, some BBQ sauce.
--------
It sounds like a lot of work. It really isn't. It's a lot of time but the actual prep/cook/stir tasks added up are very minimal and mesh well with all the other prep going on during a good overnight BBQ run. Your effort will be widely rewarded. And you can then mess with the sauce ingredients to your hearts content each time you do it, until you find a flavor that's uniquely yours.
Just don't do what I did during my BBQ last week -- and accidentally set the oven to 350 instead of 'warm' at the very last stage, forget you left them in there and burn the crap out of all the beans before anybody gets any. I ruined all but a cup or two of them, and filled my kitchen with smoke. Even so, the folks who sampled the small amount that didn't burn seemed to rather enjoy them. D'oh. :)