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Baked Beans (Lbs navy beans lb salt pork)
2 lbs. navy beans 1 lb. salt pork Brown sugar 1 t mustard 1 t ginger Salt Soak beans over night in cold water. In morning parboil, with a little soda in the water, until the outside skin of beans crackle. Drain. Place in bean pot with the salt pork (scored across the top) in the center. .
Season with the mustard, ginger, brown sugar and salt to taste. Cover with boiling water and bake very slowly for several hours, adding more water as it cooks away. Molasses may be added if desired.
A church-supper bean pot in the New England manner, written for a cook who already knew what a bean pot was and how long "several hours" meant. The essentials translate cleanly.
- Oven temperature"Bake very slowly" is not defined here; in practice something in the range of 250-300F suits the instruction. Reckon on several hours — perhaps 5 to 6 at the higher end, longer at the lower — with the beans done when they are creamy through and the liquid has thickened.
- The soda in the parboilA pinch of baking soda softens skins and speeds cooking in hard water. Use no more than 1/4 teaspoon for the whole pot and drain thoroughly, since excess soda turns beans mushy and gives a faintly soapy taste.
- Quantities left openBrown sugar and salt are "to taste" with no amount given. For 2 lb of dry beans, start with 1/2 to 3/4 cup brown sugar, or half that plus 1/2 cup molasses, and add salt cautiously — the salt pork contributes a good deal.
- Salt pork todayModern salt pork can be saltier than the fat side pork the recipe assumes. Rinse it, and if it is lean, taste for salt before adding any of your own. A thick slab of unsmoked pork belly works if salt pork is unavailable.
- Scoring the porkThe cross-hatching lets fat render out into the beans. The recipe says only to set the scored piece in the centre and cover with boiling water; the usual practice is to work the piece up rind side up near the end so the top browns rather than boils.
- Keeping it covered with waterBeans left dry at the surface stay hard and stubborn. Check every hour and top up with boiling — not cold — water so the pot never loses its heat. The recipe says nothing about a lid; if you have baked it covered, leaving it open for the last half hour will set a crust.
- YieldTwo pounds of dry beans makes roughly 12 to 16 servings — a potluck quantity.
Slow-baked navy beans with salt pork and molasses are generally traced to colonial New England, where a pot could be set in the cooling brick oven on Saturday and eaten cold or reheated through the Sabbath; by the time this book was compiled the dish had spread well beyond New England and become standard American church-supper and picnic fare. The glazed earthenware bean pot the recipe assumes — narrow-necked, to slow evaporation over a long bake — was a common enough kitchen item that no one thought to describe it. The recipe seasons with ginger and dry mustard, and leaves the sweetening open: "molasses may be added if desired."