My Grandmother’s Baked Beans

My Grandmother Made the Best Baked Beans

When I was young, my grandparents lived with us and my grandmother made the most delicious meals.  The one thing I loved, was her home made baked beans. We had a garden where we grew the baking beans and I remember cutting the bushes and hanging them upstairs in the garage to dry. After they dried, I would shell the beans and my grandmother did her magic with her baking.  We had enough dried beans to last until next garden harvest.  She never measured, just added ingredients and they turned out so yummy.  I know what she put in them, but not the amounts so when I make them I do the same as she did, just dump in the molasses and brown sugar.   I decided to measure this time so I can share the recipe.  This is what I came up with:

Prepare the beans:

I rinsed and sorted one pound of great northern beans, added them to a large pot and added 6 cups of hot water, bringing to a boil for 2 minutes.

Remove from heat, cover and let stand for an hour.  Drain the water and rinse the beans.

Cook the beans:

I added 6 cups of water to the pound of rinsed beans plus a cut up onion and let simmer with lid slightly to the side for about 1 1/2 hours.

After cooking the beans and they are tender, I drained and rinse them.

Baking the beans:

After adding the beans to my baking pan, (the same pan that my grandmother used for baking hers!) I mixed in 3/4 cup of dark brown sugar, 1/2 cup of molasses and mix together.  When all mixed, I added 1/2 cup of hot water and mixed that in.

My grandmother would add salt pork to her beans, but I substituted bacon slices on the top.   I baked the beans at 300 degrees for about 3 hours.

The beans smelled so good while baking and even better when eating!

Another variation my grandmother did was add her home made chili sauce to them at times. Since the store bought chili sauce no where compares to home made, I didn’t add that.

While eating dinner, it brought back wonderful memories from over 60 years ago of my grandmother’s delicious cooking.

If you try my recipe, I’d love to know how they turned out!