Baked Beans Revisited - Oh...my...goodness...

As promised in an earlier thread, I revisited baked beans today using a recipe inspired by Linda's Mum and Howie's Grandpa. Oh, they are soooo good. I thought they'd be sickly sweet, but they're not at all, rather they have a very appealing smoky sweetness to them which has had me eating them out of the pot since I pulled it out of the oven.

I say "inspired by", because it was last minute decision to make these, which meant I had to use what I had on hand. That meant cannellini beans (soaked for four hours), treacle in place of molasses, and a ham bone left over from Christmas. I used twice the quantity of beans recommended (1kg), and boiled the beans for about 45mins first until they were just tender. Then, as Linda recommended, I started gently with the treacle, stirring the pot every hour or so and tasting, and adding more as I went along. In the end I used about a cup of treacle in total (I still can't believe it, because the beans just aren't that sweet), and maybe a tsp or so of salt. At the 3 hour mark, I pulled the ham bone out, took off the meat, and added it to the beans, then put them back in the oven for another 3/4 hour. And, as Howie predicted, the beans aren't mushy !

Thanks so much for the recipe, friends.

Cheers, Celia

bakedbeans.jpg

They look delicious. ummm..

My husband would kill for these!

Peter, thank you, they are delicious ! We had them with roast lamb and root veges last night. A surprisingly good combination...

Jo Ann, they were dead easy to make, and so cheap - I think it cost me all of $3.50 to make a huge pot full - I think there must have been 3kg of finished beans ! (Mind you, I did have an old ham bone, I guess it would cost more if you were buying bacon). Linda/Howie's recipes were great, and Carl's looked good too, but maple syrup is quite expensive over here (treacle is cheap). Recipes are here if you want to try them !

Celia

Celia, I'm glad you liked this style of baked beans. I decided to have some for dinner myself. I am trying an experiment using (y'all forgive me) canned navy beans. I've never used them in this recipe, although I have spicy baked bean recipe that uses canned pork & beans. I'll post back on whether this works well or not.

Well, I made the baked beans from canned beans. They tasted all right, but the texture stayed just like canned beans and did not develop the creaminess that you get from pressure cooking dried beans and then baking them for 3-4 hours.

Linda, I once tried to pressure cook garbanzo beens (we call them chickpeas), and the skins all came off, and clogged up the release valve and nearly blew the cooker up. I've been too chicken to try beans in the pc ever since.

Pete wants me to try the baked bean recipe again with bacon bones and molasses, so I might give it another go next week.

Pete wants me to try the baked bean recipe again with bacon bones and molasses, so I might give it another go next week.

What are bacon bones?

Darn this cultural divide...I'll go buy some and post a pic, Linda.

Darn this cultural divide...I'll go buy some and post a pic, Linda.

That's OK, I can google it - just didn't take the time before I posted. I had to look up treacle earlier today. Just showing my ignorance, I guess.

My quick google search didn't turn up a description. A search on images found something akin to ribs. Am I close?

I rather like the diversity of this group. I've learned a lot here.

Peter, thank you, they are delicious ! We had them with roast lamb and root veges last night. A surprisingly good combination...

Jo Ann, they were dead easy to make, and so cheap - I think it cost me all of $3.50 to make a huge pot full - I think there must have been 3kg of finished beans ! (Mind you, I did have an old ham bone, I guess it would cost more if you were buying bacon). Linda/Howie's recipes were great, and Carl's looked good too, but maple syrup is quite expensive over here (treacle is cheap). Recipes are here if you want to try them !

Celia

You bet, I want them. I always have an old ham bone in the freezer. I'll let you know how it works out! Thx.

Pete wants me to try the baked bean recipe again with bacon bones and molasses, so I might give it another go next week.

What are bacon bones?

Well, since bacon is from the belly, very near the spare ribs - I'm guessing when Celia gets around to posting her picture, it will be what we know as pork spare ribs.
Bacon bones. Hmmmmmmm

Can you believe I went up and down the shopping centre and no-one had bacon bones today ? Well, that's not true, one deli did, but they didn't look any good, so I didn't buy them. They had a sign on them though saying "smoked ribs" - does that help ?

John, you're close, but the bones are smoked, like bacon, I guess. I'll try again next time I'm out...

You guys don't have treacle ? Our sugar goo products go in this order : molasses (very dark and sticky, generally fed to cattle), then treacle (less dark and sticky, bit sweeter), then golden syrup (golden coloured and sweeter again). Golden syrup pudding is a famous Australian (and I suspect British - Peter ?) steamed pudding. Another point of interest - our sugar is all sugar cane based, we don't have beet sugar here at all. This website has a more indepth discussion.

The cultural differences are fun, really - always keeps me on my toes !

Cheers, Celia

Edit : ok, found them down the road. What do you guys call these ? We call them bacon bones..

baconbones.jpg

well they look like they could be what we know as "spare ribs with a St Louis trim" or they could also be baby backs. It's hard to tell from the picture. But the connection with bacon leads me to spare ribs.

I'm going to have to make a trip down there one of these days to get all this stuff straight.

These are smoked spareribs, for sure. Not quite the right contour for baby backs. And that end flap (we call them rib tips) is a dead giveaway. Yummmmmm!