Andrew Schloss's Super Bowl Recipe: Slow Cooked Barbecued Baked Beans
After Thanksgiving, Super Bowl Sunday is the biggest food blow-out in the United States, which means a day that once meant sitting back with a beer has become a sentence of hard labor for the cook of the house. I say let your slow cooker do the work.
Barbecued beans take so much time and fiddling that most of us have long since abandoned homemade for canned. Well, I’m as fond of canned baked beans as the next guy, but I’ve never tasted one that can compare with the real thing. And when it comes to the real thing, you can’t beat a slow cooker for ease and excellence. The cooking time is still absurdly long, the flavor is sweet, smoky, and spicy, and the texture is melt-in-your-mouth; all that’s missing is the drudgery.
In the summer I would serve these beans as a side dish with grilled food, but for Super Bowl, I just serve them right out of the crock (it keeps them warm) with a basket of cornbread. Then just crack open a beer and claim victory.
The kind of beans you use will not affect the flavor (the pungency of BBQ sauce will overpower any bean) but it will change the color somewhat.
If you want to make these beans vegetarian, you can eliminate the ham hock. Use two roasted bell peppers, instead of half a pepper, and replace the chicken broth with vegetable broth.
Slow Cooked Barbecued Baked Beans
From Art of the Slow Cooker: 80 Exciting New Recipes by Andrew Schloss, published by Chronicle Books
Makes 8 servings
1 pound (2 cups) dried beans, white, pinto, or mixed
1 pound smoked ham hock or turkey leg
2 teaspoons vegetable oil
1 medium onion, diced
1/2 roasted red bell pepper, diced (bottled or homemade--see below, How to Roast a Pepper)
4 cups chicken broth
1 cup bottled spicy barbecue sauce, divided
1/2 teaspoon spicy chili powder
Put the beans in a bowl, cover with at least 3 inches of water, and soak overnight. Or put the beans in a saucepan, cover with 3 inches of water, and bring to a boil. Cook at a boil for 3 minutes, remove from the heat, and let soak for 1 hour. Drain.
Place the smoked meat in a 4- or 5-quart slow cooker and pour the soaked beans on top.
Heat the oil in a large heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion and sauté until barely tender, about 3 minutes. Add the roasted pepper and broth, and bring to a boil. Remove from the heat and stir in 1/2 cup of the barbecue sauce; pour and scrape into the slow cooker, and mix to coat the beans. Cover the cooker and cook on low for 10 to 12 hours, until the beans are tender and the sauce is slightly thickened.
Remove the meat from the beans and set aside until cool enough o handle. Turn the cooker to high, mix the chili powder and remaining 1/2 cup barbecue sauce in a small bowl, and stir into the beans. Remove the skin and bone from the meat, and break the meat into small pieces. Stir into the beans and cook for 10 minutes.
How to Roast a Pepper
Place the pepper directly onto the grate of a gas burner set on high, under a broiler set to the highest setting, or over a hot grill. As the skin on one side of the pepper burns, turn it over, and continue this way until the skin is uniformly burnt. Be careful to keep it moving so that the flesh under the skin doesn’t char. Place the pepper in a paper bag or a bowl, close the bag or cover the bowl, and set aside until cool enough to handle. Peel off the burnt skin with your fingers, and remove the stems and seeds before dicing.
Stoneburner on January 26, 2009 at 12:49 PM
Why not post pictures of the food instead of the writer? WE DON'T CARE WHAT THE WRITER LOOKS LIKE. This is a serious problem that pervades ~95 percent of the posts to this pathetic excuse for a food blog. FOCUS ON THE FOOD.