Home › Seven Weeks' Menus › Home Baked Beans
Home Baked Beans
1 quart navy beans 1/2 pound salt pork 1 tablespoon salt 1/2 teaspoon mustard 2 tablespoons molasses 1 cup hot water Wash and pick the beans and soak over night. In the morning drain, cover with cold water; bring slowly to boiling point and parboil for 30 minutes. To test, take up spoonful and blow on them; if skin curls back they are done. Drain in colander; place in 2-quart earthen bean pot layer of beans, then add salt pork, which has been previously washed and gashed across top; fill pot up with beans. Dissolve seasonings and molasses in cup of hot water, pour over beans, then fill pot with hot water, cover and bake from 6 to 8 hours, renewing water as it cooks away until nearly done, then let water cook away. Serve 8.
A standard New England bean pot, and the method still works as written. The only real translations needed are the oven setting, which the original omits, and a few vessel notes.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given, which was normal for a recipe written for a range in constant use. For a 6-to-8-hour bake, use 250-300F; the pot should barely murmur, never boil hard.
- A quart of beansDry navy beans measured by volume: roughly 1 1/2 to 1 3/4 lb, about two standard 1 lb bags. Note that a quart of dry beans swells to more than two quarts once cooked, so the 2-quart pot the recipe specifies will be full to the brim.
- Salt porkFatty salt-cured pork belly, still sold in vacuum packs near the bacon. Rinse it to pull down the surface salt, then score the rind in a crosshatch so the fat renders into the beans. Unsmoked pork belly or a slab of thick bacon substitutes acceptably.
- SaltA full tablespoon on top of half a pound of salt pork is heavy by current taste. Start with a teaspoon, and correct at the end once the pork has given up its salt.
- The blow testThis is the hinge of the recipe. Beans whose skins split and curl when you blow across a spoonful have hydrated all the way through; beans that stay smooth are worth parboiling longer, since sugar and acid in the molasses are thought to slow any further softening of the skins once baking starts.
- The bean potA 2-quart glazed earthenware bean pot with a lid; a heavy Dutch oven or covered casserole of the same capacity does the same job. The narrow neck of a true bean pot slows evaporation, so in a wide pot expect to top up with boiling water more often.
- Water managementKeep the beans just covered for the first five or six hours, then stop adding water so the last hour reduces to a thick syrup and the top browns. Add boiling water, not cold, or you drop the pot temperature and stall the cooking.
- YieldEight generous servings as a main dish with brown bread.