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| Boston Baked Beans fresh from the oven |
Having a bank holiday weekend looming, and several friends over for breakfast etc, I decided to make some real baked beans again last week.
The baked bean has suffered a terrible fate at the hands of ambitious American industrialists, and the product they created - like so many others - bears no resemblance to the original delicious dish. The nasty tomatoey mess that lurks inside the ubiquitous tins has given the baked bean a bad name, and no one with an inch of culinary credential will touch them with a ten foot pole. Not being a food snob, I occasionally serve them to guests as a side dish, hoping that bacon and eggs and cornbread will distract them sufficiently not to notice the industrial origin of the gluey orange stuff, but really, it really isn't a good way to treat one's guests.
So I decided to do the decent thing and make real baked beans again. I do them only two or three times a year, the process is a little involved and one needs to plan ahead.
The preparations started Thursday, when I used my lunch break to buy dried white beans (Navy beans) and a large piece of belly of pork. My evening was spent picking over the beans, soaking them in cold salted water, and frying the belly of pork - the latter took about forty five minutes on the stove top.
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| Fried belly of pork |
By then the whole house smelled of fried pork, and when I finally got to sleep I was enveloped in psychedelic dreams involving toothsome pigs, fried in one piece and flying through the air with forks and knives stuck into their back, like I was in Cockaigne.
Friday evening arrived, and I returned home to tend to my beans. I rinsed them off and set them onto a fire just covered with fresh water. I boiled them up, and simmered them for an hour. By now they were soft, but not mushy.
In the meantime I chopped and fried an onion, using the fat that drained from the pork belly on the previous night. I also mixed up some sauce to pour over the beans - salt, mustard powder, and maple syrup. You can use molasses or treacle as well, and add sugar. But don't add tomatoes or ketchup, because that will turn your Boston Baked Beans into some other, lesser, bean stew.
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| Fried onion |
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| Mixed sauce for the beans |
Grab a largish pot and put the fried belly of pork into the centre. Now add the cooked beans, decanting them all around the pork. Lastly pour your sauce, into which you will have stirred the fried onions and belly of pork frying juice, over the beanish mix. Do make sure you use a big pot - you don't want the mixture to boil over and bespatter your oven! And put plenty of water/sauce onto the beans - they will be in the oven for a long time, and a lot of water can evaporate or infiltrate your beans!
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| Fried belly of pork nestling inside the cooked beans |
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| Notice how large the pot is? |
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| Lots of sauce and water cover the beans |
Now cover your bean pot with a lid and insert it into a slow oven. 'Slow' means low heat, but the way. If you have a cast iron pot, use it - their lids are heavy, and a heavy lid cuts down on condensation escaping from the pot and humidifying your house.
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| That darn flashlight shows up all the dirt on the pot! |
Bake your beans overnight - there is no need to be exact, anything between eight and twelve hours will do. As a result of the long process - soaking, cooking, baking - the beans are wonderfully soft, and can be eaten without unfortunate side effects on one's digestive system. Make lots, and freeze leftovers in small portions. That way whenever you fancy to have some with your bacon and eggs, or on toast, you can use them, rather than having to rely on the tomatoey tinned stuff.
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| Ahhhhhh breakfast! |
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| I ate all those and no belly ache whatsoever! |
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| Freezer food |
They are very nice with corn bread, by the way!
