I made these beans for a picnic and got raves all out of proportion, I thought, to the difficulty of making them or the cleverness of the recipe. They’re your basic beans intended to be served with barbecue and the receipe would be a good submission to a church fundraiser cookbook since they use a bunch of stuff out of bottles, but nobody has asked me to contribute to a church fundraiser cookbook. So here it goes.

Serves 8–16 depending on how many side dishes you’ve got at your picnic.

• 2 cups dried great northern beans
• 1/2 lb. thick-cut bacon, chopped
• 1 medium onion, chopped small
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 12-ounce bottle dark beer
• 2 cups water
• 1/3 cup catsup
• 2 tablespoons whole-grain mustard
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons molasses
• dash Tabasco sauce
• dash worcestershire sauce
• 2 teaspoons salt, or to taste

1. Soak the beans in 8 cups cool water for 4 hours or overnight.
2. In a large pot, cook the bacon slowly over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until not-quite crisp. Drain all but 3 tablespoons of the fat from the pan. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft. Add the garlic and cook another minute.
3. Add the beans and all remaining ingredients except the salt. Bring to a boil, cover, reduce heat, and simmer for 3 hours or until the beans are tender. (Obviously you can do this in a crock pot, if you’re a crock pot kind o’ guy. Or gal.)
4. Add the salt and simmer another hour. Add more salt or brown sugar to taste, if desired.

RSS 2.0 |