My great-grandmother's recipe for Boston baked beans includes salt pork (fatback). I discovered that you do have to put some fat into baked beans to help all the flavors blend together. However, you can use vegetable oil, just stir it into the bean pot before you bake it. Boston baked beans are usually seasoned with dry mustard, to offset the sweetness of the molasses and brown sugar. My great-grandmother didn't like mustard, and neither do I. Her recipe calls for ground ginger, which shifts the molasses flavor in the direction of "gingerbread", and is quite nice. It's tastier with the salt pork (which is lightly smoked), but it works okay with vegetable oil.
>> My great-grandmother's recipe for Boston baked beans includes salt pork (fatback).<<
Bacon or bacon grease is another popular option.
>> I discovered that you do have to put some fat into baked beans to help all the flavors blend together. However, you can use vegetable oil, just stir it into the bean pot before you bake it.<<
And/or topdress it by sauteeing spices in ghee or olive oil.
Red palm oil goes great with beans, if you can find an ethical source.
>> Boston baked beans are usually seasoned with dry mustard, to offset the sweetness of the molasses and brown sugar. My great-grandmother didn't like mustard, and neither do I. Her recipe calls for ground ginger, which shifts the molasses flavor in the direction of "gingerbread", and is quite nice.<<
Other funkeners include onion (or other alliums) and asafoetida.
If you like the gingerbread effect, try making beans with garam masala. That's what I usually use for making ham-and-beans.
>> It's tastier with the salt pork (which is lightly smoked), but it works okay with vegetable oil.<<
You want the flavors of salt and smoke in the beans. People who put onions in their baked beans usually saute the chopped onions in some butter, meat drippings, or oil, before mixing that into the beans. (We won't discuss people who put tomato sauce in baked beans. They're not making BOSTON baked beans.)
You started the beans soaking on Friday night. By Saturday evening they were ready for the cooking process to begin - simmering the beans, mixing the ingredients for the sauce, arranging everything in the bean pot, and putting them towards the back of the stove to cook very slowly overnight, so they'd be ready to serve as part of Sunday dinner. Ideally the beans were a side dish to a roasted meat of some kind, even just a chicken, or you could put cut-up hot dogs into the bean mixture to heat up. Leftover beans could be eaten as "beans on toast" as a quick snack at any time, but I'm fairly certain none of my ancestors ever ate baked beans for breakfast.
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ysabetwordsmith) wrote2020-03-27 06:07 pm
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Thoughts
Bacon or bacon grease is another popular option.
>> I discovered that you do have to put some fat into baked beans to help all the flavors blend together. However, you can use vegetable oil, just stir it into the bean pot before you bake it.<<
And/or topdress it by sauteeing spices in ghee or olive oil.
Red palm oil goes great with beans, if you can find an ethical source.
>> Boston baked beans are usually seasoned with dry mustard, to offset the sweetness of the molasses and brown sugar. My great-grandmother didn't like mustard, and neither do I. Her recipe calls for ground ginger, which shifts the molasses flavor in the direction of "gingerbread", and is quite nice.<<
Other funkeners include onion (or other alliums) and asafoetida.
If you like the gingerbread effect, try making beans with garam masala. That's what I usually use for making ham-and-beans.
>> It's tastier with the salt pork (which is lightly smoked), but it works okay with vegetable oil.<<
Yeah.
Re: Thoughts
You started the beans soaking on Friday night. By Saturday evening they were ready for the cooking process to begin - simmering the beans, mixing the ingredients for the sauce, arranging everything in the bean pot, and putting them towards the back of the stove to cook very slowly overnight, so they'd be ready to serve as part of Sunday dinner. Ideally the beans were a side dish to a roasted meat of some kind, even just a chicken, or you could put cut-up hot dogs into the bean mixture to heat up. Leftover beans could be eaten as "beans on toast" as a quick snack at any time, but I'm fairly certain none of my ancestors ever ate baked beans for breakfast.