>G, the Recipe for real Boston Baked Beans you mention in TIA #3... Do
>you or Zoner actually have that recipe?

I don't believe so, no - Zoner outlined that scene, and as far as I know he just threw in the reference because he likes baked beans, not because he knows how to cook them, and I've never gone to the trouble. However, a quick scout round the Internet turns up any number of Boston baked bean recipes, including one at the official Crock-Pot® website that looks like a good starting place:

Boston Baked Beans
Serves 8

Ingredients:
2 pounds dried small white beans
12 cups water
2 teaspoons salt
1 cup molasses
2 tablespoons dry mustard
½ cup dark brown sugar
½ cup chopped onions
¼ cup salt pork or thick sliced bacon, chopped into small pieces
Olive oil

Directions:
Soak beans in water in uncovered stoneware overnight (or for a minimum of 8 hours). After soaking, place stoneware in slow cooker heating base, cover, and cook on Low for 3 hours. Drain liquid reserving 1 cup and set aside. Remove beans and set aside.

Coat bottom of a skillet with olive oil and add salt pork or bacon; sauté on stovetop set to medium heat for 5-10 minutes to render fat.

Add 1 cup liquid from beans (saved from soaking) and remaining ingredients including reserved beans and bacon into the stoneware. Mix together thoroughly.

Remove from stovetop and place stoneware in slow cooker heating base. Cover and cook on Low for 10-12 hours or on High for 6-8 hours.

Personally, if I were making beans by that recipe (and I may do someday, if I'm feeling inspired), I'd jack up the brown sugar, eyeball the salt pork and probably end up using much more than a quarter-cup, and toss in some maple syrup, but I expect it would take some trial and error to get it entirely right. Crockpottery is an inexact science.

Now, being a Mainer, I'm required by custom to say at this point that I don't see anything wrong with the tinned beans from Burnam & Morrill of Portland; and even if I wasn't, I would anyway, because they're the Beans Of My Childhood, as it were. That said, I'm pretty sure my mother has an actual beanpot kicking around someplace, though knowing Mom, she has a plant potted in it. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
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