Bonnie’s Baked Beans

In 1978, my girl friend (now my wife) and I accompanied my parents to stay the Trinity Mountains of California at my uncle’s property for a week.  Several of my uncles have spent part of their summers improving this property and have made a comfortable summer get-away location.  When we visited, the site was still a little primitive (we slept in a large shipping container), but it was a nice place to enjoy the wildlife (rattlesnakes and deer), or go to the Trinity River and try panning for gold.

For one of the dinners, my aunt Bonnie made baked beans.  We were very impressed an decide these were the best baked beans we had ever eaten.  Before we left for home, we asked my aunt for the recipe because we were going to go home and make the recipe.  Now 32 years later, we had not yet made the recipe.  This weekend we are attending a family gathering and we were asked to bring a side dish to the potluck.  We thought this would be a great time to make the baked beans, so my wife found the recipe and gave it to me to make.

Bonnie’s Baked Beans
Ingredients:
   1 ½ pounds of ground beef
   ¾ pound of bacon
   1 cup onion, chopped
   2 cans pork and beans, (1 pound, 15 ounce, or so)
   1 can kidney beans, drained
   1 can butter beans, drained
   1 cup Catsup
   1-tablespoon brown sugar
   1-tablespoon liquid smoke
   3-tablespoons white vinegar
   1-tablespoon salt
   Dash of pepper

Brown the ground beef, drain, and put in crock-pot.  Brown bacon and onion, drain and add to crock-pot.  Add remaining ingredients and stir.  Cook on low 4 to 9 hours.

I took a shopping trip to get the ground beef, bacon, and a couple large cans of original flavored Bush Beans.  We normally do not eat ground beef because years ago we just missed getting some of the hamburger tainted with Mad Cow disease, now we are better safe than sorry, and this is why we often use buffalo instead of beef.  As ground buffalo does not have much flavor, I went ahead and purchased ground beef from a store that only offers naturally raised beef.

Following the directions in the recipe, I browned the beef and added it to the crock-pot, then browned the bacon in two batches.  As the bacon comes in 1-pound packages and the recipe calls for ¾ pound, I used some of the bacon to make a BLT sandwich for my lunch.  I browned the onions then added the onions and bacon to the crock-pot.  Next, I opened the cans of beans and added them to the crock-pot as well as the remainder of the ingredients.  I stirred everything together until it was mixed and set the crock pot on low setting to cook for 8 hours.  Occasional I would go to the kitchen to stir the beans and sample a small amount to make sure they were edible.

Once the beans finished baking, I transferred the contents of the crock-pot to a large metal bowl to cool.  We were surprised to see that there was an area in the crock-pot where the beans had burned to the side of the crock.  Fortunately, it was just a small area and the burning didn’t affect the flavor of the rest of the beans.

My wife and I had a small ramekin of the hot beans with our dinners last night (we had to make sure they were ok to serve to others), and we really enjoyed the richness of the flavors.  The ground beef added some body to the beans and the seasonings added a nice tangy taste.

Now that I have finally made this baked bean recipe, I will make it again.  Next time, I will only bake the beans in the crock-pot for about 6 hours to make sure that I don’t get the burning I experienced this time.  This recipe makes a large amount of baked bean, so next time I make the recipe; I will probably freeze some of the finished baked beans to use later.  All I can say is that 32 years after we first tried them, these are still the best baked beans that I have ever eaten.

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell