A Recipe from K.B.: Hudson Baked Beans

I feel that this blog has not been living up to its promise of providing occasional culinary digressions. So today I will provide a recipe created by K.B.

K.B. was always on a quest of some sort related to food. Whether it was attempting to find a rare ingredient in an obscure recipe, or whether it was trying to find the best possible way to create a particular dish, she was intrepid. In late 2011 she blogged about her mission to create baked beans just like those from a can:

“I’ve read about people who obsess over things. I’ve met them. I’m one of them. Now, I’m not talking obsessive compulsive disorder. I mean obsessing about getting something just right, down to the smallest detail. Even if you’re only doing it because…then you can say you did it. 

People who make miniature models, for instance. Or recreate historic clothing, dying wool they spun themselves, weaving it or knitting it into something using only tools that someone would have had access to in whatever era they are imitating. 

I tend to spend large amounts of time trying to get certain eatables just right. Baked beans kept me busy for years. I happen to like – but due to allergies can’t eat – tinned beans. It took me ages, but I can now make home made baked beans taste like Libby’s canned beans. Backwards, I know. It would be better to spend time (assuming I worked at Campbells or something) making tinned food taste home made. But there you have it. Three years, obsessing over beans.”

I was fascinated by this particular quest (which went so far that K.B. once brought a slow cooker filled with the beans into work). I weirdly love the taste of plain canned beans in tomato sauce, too (no pork for me, as I’m vegetarian). To me they summon up memories of one of my comfort meals as a child, canned beans on toast made from white bread.

When I read that K.B. felt she had created a recipe that duplicated this taste, I asked her for the recipe. Here is a vegetarianized version of it; I assume that the original version contained a half-pound of salt pork rather than the veggie bacon.

“Hudson Baked Beans*

2 cups navy beans

8 cups cold water (I use bottled, but only in Saskatchewan because of its hard water)

1 tsp salt

1 cup diced onions

½ pound veggie bacon, fried up

½ cup brown sugar (I’ve used light and dark. This recipe was light.)

1-3 tsps Keen’s Mustard Powder (Yup, always Keen’s.)

¼ tsp pepper

1 tsp salt

1 tin tomato paste

½ to ¾ cup molasses, table or blackstrap (If I use 3 tsps of the mustard, I use the full ¾ cup of molasses)

2 glugs of ketchup

Method

Soak beans in cold water, overnight or at least six hours. Add tsp of salt and bring to a boil. Simmer gently 1-2 hours. At the 1.5 hour mark, get some beans in a spoon and blow on them. If the skins split, they’re ready. If they don’t, or only a few do, keep simmering.

Drain the beans but KEEP the water.

Mix 2 cups of the water with all the ingredients listed after the veggie bacon. (Keep any liquid over the two cups, you might need it later.)

Put half of the beans in a bean pot. Sprinkle the onions on top. Put the veggie bacon on the onions, then cover with remaining beans. Pour the liquid over everything. Bake in a 250F oven for 6-7 hours. At the three-hour mark, take the pot out and stir everything together. If they seem a little too saucy, add some of the remaining bean liquid, or water if you only had two cups of the bean water. Sometimes I take taste test at the six-hour mark.”

*Named after K.B.’s hometown of Hudson, Quebec.