Baked Beans.......The Real Stuff

I love baked beans, and I don't really know why I haven't ever made them for myself. I grow beans , tomatoes and onions, plus the herbs, so I have all the ingredients. For some reason I had a mental block and assumed they should come from a tin. Crazy!

I woke up when I was writing an article about the preservatives, chemicals and colourants in so many of our foods. I checked my cupboard and the only guilty party was 2 tins of baked beans. That's when I realised it was time to find a recipe.

Looking though a bunch of books I found three recipes that sounded good, so I made all of them, and then did a combination which I was happy with. Two recipes had bacon bits in, which I didn't add, but feel free to add some if you eat meat. Jamie Oliver's recipe was delicious, but very intense flavours which made it more of a main meal than a comforting bowl of beans to have on toast.

One thing I did discover is that they have to cook for a long time. Most recipes are 3 hours. I tried doing them in the pressure cooker but they really do need 2-3 hours in the oven or slow cooker to get that delicious hearty flavour.

It is a quite a long list of ingredients, but the preparation is really quick.

The mustard wasn't in all of the recipes, but I like the extra flavour so I recommend adding it. If you use English mustard cut the amount by half as it is so much stronger.

You can use a dark treacle or replace it with molasses, but honey or syrup doesn't give the same depth that you need in this dish.

The quantities here makes a lot of beans so you can either bottle or freeze the extras. I froze mine and it worked perfectly.

Ingredients

1 cup dried white beans, soaked for at

least 8 hours

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 onion, finely chopped

1 stalk celery, finely chopped

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

2 ½ cups cooked or canned tomatoes

1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

1 tsp rosemary

1 tsp parsley

1 tsp basil

1 tsp paprika

2 cups vegetable stock

2 Tbsp brown sugar

1 tsp Dijon mustard

1 Tbsp black treacle (or molasses)

Salt & pepper

Directions

Cook the beans in plenty of water for 1 hour, or until tender (or 15 minutes in a pressure cooker)
Meanwhile gently fry the onions and celery
until softened, then add the garlic
Add all of the other ingredients and bring to the boil.
Add the beans and stir well
Place in a heavy casserole dish, cover and bake
at 160C for 3 hours, stirring occasionally. OR cook for 3 hours in a slow cooker (or Instant Pot)
If they get very dry add a small amount of water.

Download the Recipe