Truth be told, I love baked beans. There are few meals that I enjoy more than a big bowl of baked beans and a generous side of coleslaw. To my taste, the crunch of the coleslaw perfectly complements the sweet/savory flavor of the baked beans. Throw in a piece of my neighbor Sarah’s world-class cornbread and I’m over the moon. So, naturally, I’m always on the lookout for creative new ways to prepare baked beans and the creative twist in this recipe, the use of Ireland’s famous Guinness Stout as the cooking liquid for the beans, fascinated me. This recipe is adapted from one that appears in Julie Van Rosendaal’s and Sue Duncan’s cookbook Spilling The Beans. Their book offers ways to incorporate healthy beans into your recipes at every meal. Yes, even for breakfast! While our British cousins have long savoured breakfast beans (baked beans on toast and baked beans as a part of a full English fry-up, for example), we yankees never have seemed to warm to the idea of putting beans on our breakfast plates. Spilling The Beans may change that. Spilling The Beans also makes a convincing case for the health benefits of consuming beans. Beans, they remind us, are high in fiber, rich in protein, cheap and their cultivation is easy on Mother Earth. They also have a long, long shelf life, so you can keep them handy in your pantry, either canned or in dry form, for use anytime you are moved to cook with them. And, don’t be afraid of cooking with dried beans either. Now that Instant Pots are cheap and pretty much ubiquitous in kitchens across the country, there is no reason not to prepare your own beans from scratch. It’s a cinch. While this recipe is wonderful (and you can sip a Guinness while you cook), you might also want to consider some of the other baked bean recipes I’ve posted on Blue Cayenne over the last three years. Just type “baked beans” into the search box to the right of this post and you will find baked beans with chipotles, baked beans baked with whiskey and a killer baked bean recipe using dates as the sweetener. Now where did I put that coleslaw with caraway seeds recipe? [mpprecipe-recipe:167] Spilling The Beans is available from Amazon: Spilling The Beans.

 

 

Raise your hands if you don’t like baked beans.  Nobody?  I thought so.

This baked bean recipe has it all. It shines with the best beans you can buy but it is also great with plain Jane canned beans. (I used Rancho Gordo ayocote dry beans. Rancho Gordo Beans Site)It can be as sweet as you want it to be. Piquant savory flavors (tomato, garlic, onion) complement the sweet ingredients (molasses, apples, maple syrup). Did I mention that it incorporates two generous pours of bourbon whiskey–one pour for the beans and one for the cook?

As a testimony to the sheer goodness of baked beans, just about everyone claims a part in the creation of the dish. French cooks say American baked beans take their inspiration from French cassoulet. The Canadians say the dish is a Quebecois specialty. Historians say the Penebscot Indians, who baked their beans buried in hot ash in large holes in the ground, probably introduced baked beans to loggers working in the forests of Maine. Boston says the beans are theirs. Heinz started putting them in cans in 1901 and created a wildly-successful product.

 

Baked beans have infiltrated the cuisines of some pretty exotic places, too. I remember ordering a breakfast of baked beans on toast at the ground floor cafe in Mumbai’s Taj Mahal Hotel. It turns out the beans were the hotel’s culinary nod to Britain’s colonial role in the country. Baked beans were, after all, a part of the full English breakfast tradition–eggs, grilled tomato, hash browns, bacon, sausages, black pudding and baked beans. At the Taj, though, they were served with a side of mango chutney.

Whatever their provenance, baked beans, properly prepared, are a delicious addition to any menu.

This recipe is a meal in a bowl to be savoured on a cold winter evening, but the opportunities to pair it with other dishes are endless. (I served mine with a simple mayonnaise coleslaw spiced with caraway seeds.)

[mpprecipe-recipe:102]

 

Here is a link to the original recipe from which this recipe was adapted: Best Ever Vegan Baked Beans.

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