Best Southern Baked Beans Recipe! (2024)

FAQs

What is the secret to soft baked beans? ›

soak them about 20 hours. Depending on how much water they soak up you may add more halfway through - if you set them soaking in the early evening, check them in the morning. drain, rinse, and then boil for about two hours, checking to see if they are soft.

Stir together baked beans, onion, syrup, brown sugar, ketchup, and mustard in a large bowl. Pour into a 9x13-inch baking dish. Lay bacon slices across the top. Bake in the preheated oven until the bacon is browned and the beans have thickened, 35 to 40 minutes.

Mixed Chopped Herbs + Breadcrumbs + Cheddar Cheese

Give your baked beans the gratin treatment, which also makes for an impressive presentation. Combine breadcrumbs with chopped fresh herbs and seasonings, then sprinkle the top of the beans with the mixture and plenty of grated cheddar cheese.

You might try adding some dry mustard and uncooked bacon along with chopped onion and baking them long enough to cook the bacon. I would not add molasses because they are already too sweet. Add fried onions, done to your taste, bacon, not too crispy, and brown sugar.

Those aromatics in the pot will revolutionize the beans' final flavor. The aromatics I tend to use are onions, carrots, garlic, and celery, and then heartier, woodsy herbs, like rosemary, sage, and thyme, which marry beautifully with the earthy-sweet flavor of beans.

Hot soaking is the preferred method since it reduces cooking time, helps dissolve some of the gas-causing substances in beans, and most consistently produces tender beans. Quick Soak: This is the fastest method. In a large pot, add 6 cups of water for each pound (2 cups) of dry beans.

The one tried and true method she taught me to reduce the gassy effect of beans, is this: add a tiny amount of baking soda to the pot half an hour or so before you're ready to serve them to “release” the gasses from them. Be set to stir down the violent reaction. This works no matter how you've seasoned them.

If you're worried about the white stuff on top, it's fat that cooked out of the bacon & rose to the top as it cooled.

Dressed up baked beans is an easy recipe for transforming canned baked beans into a side dish that tastes homemade! Crispy bacon, sausage, onion, and a handful of pantry staples turn canned baked beans into the best baked beans you've ever had.

Why put ketchup in baked beans? ›

Ketchup: slathered over the top of the bacon caramelizes in the oven as the beans bake low and slow. The caramelized ketchup not only creates a gorgeous, lacquered top, but a savory, tangy taste, too.

For that reason, most of our Test Kitchen recipes call for draining and rinsing canned beans, which can also help remove the metallic flavor sometimes found in cans. It's an added step that takes less than a minute but improves the flavor and texture of your finished dish.

Undercooking your beans

Overcooking can detract from the eating experience, leaving your beans bland and lifeless. Undercooking beans, on the other hand, can put yourself at risk of food-borne illness. This is especially true for red beans like kidney beans.

Smell: If the beans have a foul, sour, or rancid odor, it means that they have gone bad and should not be consumed. Taste: If the beans have an unusual or off flavor, or if they taste sour or bitter, it's likely that they have gone bad.

Use starches to thicken beans

Simply add 2 tablespoons of cornstarch to 1 cup of water or to the liquid from the baked beans (scoop it out into a separate bowl and let it cool first) and mix. Once the starch is thoroughly incorporated, pour the slurry into the baked beans dish and stir.

As they cook at a low temp in the oven, I add more liquid to keep them just covered. Toward the last 2 hours of cooking, I add acidic stuff like tomato juice. If you use anything acidic at first the beans may not soften properly as they cook.

The addition of baking soda to the cooking water does two things: It adds sodium ions that weaken the pectin as explained above, and more importantly, an alkaline environment causes the pectin molecules to break down into smaller molecules that greatly weakens the pectin causing the beans to soften much more rapidly.

There are three primary reasons why dried beans do not soften despite extensive cooking time: 1) they are old; 2) hard water; or 3) the presence of an acid. If you don't think your beans are old, then perhaps your water is the problem. Beans cooked in hard water will never soften properly.

Bring cold water to a boil in a heavy-bottomed Dutch oven over high heat. Add beans and salt, and return to a simmer; cover. Bake beans in the preheated oven until tender, about 1 hour and 10 minutes, checking after 30 minutes to ensure beans are still covered with water. If necessary, add just enough water to cover.