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Boston Baked Beans (To be baked to perfection)
To be baked to perfection, the New England bean-pot should be used, with a narrow mouth and bulging sides and a cover that fits the mouth. Soak overnight in cold water 1 quart of navy or pea beans. In the morning pour off the water and put them over the fire in fresh water, and simmer, or parboil, until, on lifting a few on a spoon and blowing a breath over them, the skins crack slightly, but do not allow them to cook until they break to pieces. Pour off the water, put them in the bean-pot with a small onion in the bottom.
Pour boiling water over 1/4 pound of salt pork well streaked with lean. Scrape the rind well, or until it is white; score through the rind in half-inch strips. Bury the pork in the beans until the rind is even with the beans. Mix 1/4 of a cup of molasses with a scant teaspoon of mustard, a little salt--if the pork is very lean less salt will be required than if nearly all fat; add a cup of boiling water, mix well, and pour over the beans. Add enough more boiling water to cover. Put the cover on the pot and bake from six to ten hours in a moderate oven; the longer time is better. Watch that the water does not cook away and leave the beans dry, adding boiling water to keep them nearly covered until an hour before they are done, when remove the cover of the pot, lift the pork slightly above the surface, and allow it to brown. Cooked in this way they will be rich and juicy and of a rich red-brown color, each bean being whole, but very tender. To be perfect as served on their "native soil," they should be very hot and have served with them the real Boston brown bread, steaming hot, sliced as it is served. The red kidney beans are delicious cooked in the same way, as are also what are known in New England as cranberry beans, a red-speckled variety, both these latter being very rich and of a delicious flavor.
A long, slow, mostly unattended bake. The only real skill is judging the parboil and keeping the pot from going dry.
- Oven temperatureA "moderate oven" is normally 350F, but for a six-to-ten-hour bake set 300F, or 275F if you are going the full ten hours. Anything hotter will boil the liquid away faster than you can replace it and the skins will toughen.
- QuantitiesA quart of dried navy beans is roughly 1 3/4 to 2 lb and will swell to fill a 3-4 quart pot. Figure eight to ten servings as a side, six as a supper with brown bread.
- The parboil is the hingeLift a few beans on a spoon and blow across them; when the skins just crack, stop. Beans stopped too early will need the longer end of the baking time, and over-parboiled ones collapse into mush in the pot.
- Salt porkQuarter-pound of streaky salt pork, scalded and scraped, is the fat and much of the salt. If your pork is heavily cured, hold the added salt back entirely and season at the end. Thick-cut unsmoked bacon or fresh pork belly with an extra pinch of salt is the nearest substitute; smoked bacon changes the character of the dish.
- Mustard"A scant teaspoon of mustard" almost certainly means dry mustard powder rather than prepared mustard from a jar.
- If you have no bean-potA narrow-mouthed pot limits evaporation, which is the whole point. A heavy lidded casserole or Dutch oven works if you keep the lid on and top up with boiling water; add water boiling, never cold, or the beans seize and cook unevenly.
- The last hourUncover, raise the pork so the scored rind sits proud of the beans, and let the top brown and the liquid reduce. Do not add water during this stage.
- Other beansThe "cranberry beans" named here are borlotti, still sold dried under both names. Kidney beans hold their shape well; both need the same overnight soak and fresh cooking water.
Baked beans belong to the Saturday-night New England kitchen: the pot went into the cooling brick oven or the back of the range and came out for supper, with the remains served cold or reheated on Sunday when work was proscribed. Molasses rather than sugar is the giveaway of the region's old trade with the West Indies, and it is why Boston beans are dark and faintly bitter-sweet where midwestern versions lean on brown sugar or tomato. The bean-pot's shape - bulging body, narrow neck, tight cap - is functional rather than decorative, built to hold steam through a long unattended bake; it is often said to descend from earthenware forms brought over in the seventeenth century, though the glazed stoneware pots of this book's period were an industrial product sold by the thousand.