I have a bean problem. My girlfriend calls me Jimmy Bean all the time, and I really like baked beans. But I can be lazy, which leads to me buying Bush's at the supermarket, and I'm freaking tired of buying crap from George W. Bush. So when I saw the bean episode of Good Eats a few months back and saw the "Once and Future Beans" recipe I was decided that it was my mission in life to make these beans.
But I didn't have a cast iron Dutch Oven. So I put things on hold. I mentioned it to my mom (who is, as previously discussed, the best president on the ObscureCraft Mt. Rushmore of cooking), and she said "Oh, we have one. I've been using it for a decoration, I'll bring it up."
Anyhoo, on to the recipe! Alton Brown's Baked Beans, ala Elisa and Jim. We actually followed the TV recipe to a 't', but the version on the Food Network web site has a major, crucial, ridiculous error, so ala.
"We hold these truths to be self evident, that all Beans are created equal." NOT TRUE. Not true at all. Step one -- open up your bag o' dried beans and start looking through them. You need to get rid of broken beans, stones, cracked beans, and partial beans. You're going to have a ton of freaking baked beans after you make this, so if you're in doubt, pick it out! See those beans in this picture? They are reject beans. Bad beans. We got rid of them.
Once you've segregated the bad beans, you should take your good beans and wash them. Throw them in a colander and give them a good rinse. Get that dirt out. Beans grow in dirt, dirt that you don't want to eat. Now put them in a bowl or similar container and cover them with water. Make sure that there is at least 2 inches of water above the top of the beans. (This is where the Food Network website screws up). Why? Because these beans are going to sop up water and get bigger. You need to ensure that the whole batch is covered with water during the entire soaking process. Two inches should do the trick. Cover them (we used a plate) and let them soak overnight, at room temperature. Yes, overnight. This is not a quick recipe. If you're in a hurry for your beans, do the prep work now and put all that stuff in the fridge so you can start them fresh in the morning. Otherwise you won't have them ready for dinner.
And for the prep. get your jalapenos, onion, and bacon together. A knife and cutting board, also handy for this step. Start chopping. You'll want to chop all them up and put them into a bowl of some sort. You'll want to chop these into smaller pieces, as they'll be part of the sauce for the beans. I wasn't that good at chopping, so Elisa showed me how. To do the onion, remove the skin and cut it in half across the 'equator' (rather than the prime meridian, if you take my meaning). Continuing with our globe metaphor, you'll next want to make slices as you would lines of longitude. and keep them pretty tight -- maybe 3/8" or so. But don't cut all the way down to the root or top of the onion, you'll want to get rid of that part. Once You've done, cut the latitude lines and you'll have a nice chopped onion. Huzzah.
Now, for the jalapenos. Had I been making this for myself, I probably would have kept the seeds in and used three pepper (that would have been "ala Jim"). But Elisa isn't so much into the spiciness, so we went for the normal recipe. Anyhoo, to start, halve the pepper. Then, take your knife and make a semicircular cut all around the stem, so you can just pull out the membrane and peppers in one fell swoop.
With the membrane removed, tilt your pepper so its side is flat against the cutting board and start cutting it into very thin, long strips. Then bundle the strips together as you would a faggot of firewood and cut them the other way, into small pieces. When you're done, you'll have peppers and onions that look like this:
Pretty, right?
Now, let's chop some bacon! Elisa taught me another neat trick. Before you start on the peppers and onions, throw the bacon in the freezer -- maybe for 10 or 15 minutes. This will make it a lot easier to chop. I came up with the idea of using a paper towel to protect my hand against the cold of the semi-frozen bacon. Anyhoo, get that bacon chopped into thinnish slivers. I didn't feel the need to chop it two ways, as it reduces a lot when you cook it, and there's nothing better than seeing identifiable pieces of bacon in your delicious baked beans.
Here's one more picture of bacon. Because bacon is awesome:
Put your onions, bacon, and peppers into your cooking vessel on the stove over medium heat. Stir so that enough fat renders from the bacon to soften the onions, probably 5 minutes or so. You'll want to have the next batch of ingredients ready to go before you do this, as they'll need to be added once the onions have softened.
Get your tomato paste, molasses, and brown sugar together. Add them to your cooking vessel and stir them in.
Everything but the beans, all stirred together:
Now to add beans! The most important ingredient, the beans. Remove them from the liquid, reserving it for use. This is done best with a colander and another bowl, but who am I to tell you how to cook? Add them to the vessel, and measure how much liquid you have left. You'll need to supplement the soaking liquid with vegetable broth to total four cups. We had about two cups of liquid, so we added two cups of vegetable broth. MATH!
Adding the broth:
Now that you've added the liquid (see above), bring the heat up to high. You're going to want to bring everything up to a boil. Now is the time that we add the cayenne pepper black pepper, and salt. Do so, and give the beans a stir to mix. Once the beans start to boil, kill the heat, cover with the lid, and move the vessel into the oven -- preheated to 250 degrees -- for 6 to 8 hours. Yes, 6 to 8 hours. You read that right. As little as 6 hours, as much as 8 hours. That's how long it takes. It's worth it. IT'S WORTH IT.
Roll the beautiful bean footage:
Six hours later:
These beans are delicious. You don't even understand it. THEY ARE BETTER THE SECOND DAY. Granted, beans are not a main course, really. We had them with kielbasa and baked sweet potatoes. The spiciness of the kielbasa and the sweetness of the yams really worked well with the spicy sweetness of the beans. Dogfish Head Punkin Ale was the perfect beer to tie all of this together. My favorite fall brew, it has hints of brown sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon, and all those wonderful things that are pumpkinesque. PUMPKINS ARE AWESOME.
Final Notes: We had a bit of fat left in the bowl after cooking for six hours. The beans looked done, so we soaked it up with a paper towel. If you like looking at photos of food and people cooking, check out the
full baked bean gallery.
