BAKED BEANS | The Best Ever Baked Beans Recipe!

Baked beans are virtually a requirement for summer holidays like Memorial Day, Fourth of July, and Labor Day. And you guys are gonna love this particular recipe because it's my mom's, but also because the flavor is top-notch with a rich, sweet, spicy, and smoky flavor that I think is perfectly balanced. It's also an easy one-pot recipe that won't take you two hours to make like many other recipes out there. So I think it's just a winner all around, and I'm pretty confident that your friends, family, and guests are all gonna love it as well. So let me show you how to make it. To get started, you'll need to dice just two veggies, a bell pepper, and half of an onion. See, I told you this was an easy recipe. And for the bell pepper, you can use any color you'd like, though I think the red enhances the rich, dark color of the baked beans beautifully. And when you're chopping up the bell pepper, don't forget to also dice up the bottom and top pieces because you don't wanna waste any of it. So random side note, but if you guys have been following me on Instagram Stories, you know that I've been testing out contact lenses for the past several weeks. I still don't know if I have the prescription dialed in quite right just yet, but, and this is a biggie, I just realized that by wearing contact lenses, my eyes no longer water when chopping onions. So that alone is a huge win in my books, in addition to, of course, being able to see what I chop in front of me because, you know, small details. And then lastly, chop up four pieces of bacon. Some recipes call for more bacon, and trust me, I'm a massive bacon lover, but I find that with more bacon, this recipe either becomes a bit too fatty, or you have to drain some grease off before adding the rest of the ingredients in the pot. So long story short, I found four pieces adds the perfect amount of bacon-y flavor while still letting the beans be the star of the dish and not turning into a bacon stew, though who knows, maybe that's a recipe idea for the future. Cook the bacon over medium-high heat in a large pot or Dutch oven until it's nice and crispy. Then add the onion and bell pepper to the pot and cook those for about three to four more minutes until they're softened. Add three garlic cloves to the pot, and you can mince them straight in, and add one tablespoon of smoked paprika for that deliciously smoky flavor. Stir these with the veggies for just another minute or so. Now comes heaps more flavor, and that's all thanks to a quarter cup of maple syrup, a quarter cup of blackstrap molasses, a quarter cup of ketchup, two tablespoons of apple cider vinegar to cut through some of that sweetness, and one tablespoon of Dijon mustard. Once that's all in the pot, give it another good stir. So when it comes to the brand of baked beans to use in this recipe, you have a couple of options. Bush's Baked Beans is a perennial winner across numerous recipes, numerous taste tests. A lot of people love this one because it has just that classic baked bean flavor that is smoky and spicy and barbecue-y. It just reminds you of your childhood, but I will say it doesn't have the cleanest ingredient list. So if you are a downshifter that wants just a cleaner ingredient list, I'll tell you about two other options. And the first is 365 brand, which I often gravitate to for a lot of things, but I have to be honest, it was not my favorite for baked beans. I thought the flavor was really muted, and there's actually a lot of liquid in the can and not as many beans, and so it just wasn't my favorite overall. But Amy's Baked Beans are a vegetarian brand. There's a ton of baked beans in here, which I'll show you in just a second. And the flavor is more tomato-y, which gives it a really good depth of flavor, but because it's vegetarian, you don't get that smoky, bacon-y flavor, but we do add that back in because I have bacon in the recipe. So I don't think you're missing any of the flavor by using Amy's, and these were definitely my favorite to use in the recipe. Now, since I've got these three cans open today, and I never like to waste food, I'm just gonna use these three different brands. And as always, there is no judgment for me on whichever brand you like to use. I'm just sharing what brand I prefer and why, but you do you. And because there's so many more beans in the Amy's can, I have to use a spoon to help get them all out as they are really packed in there. But once all the beans are in the pot, give them a stir so that they immerse themselves in all that flavor, and then bring the pot to a boil. As soon as you start seeing those bubbles, add a lid to the pot, and then transfer it to a preheated 400-degree Fahrenheit oven. You'll cook the baked beans for about 20 minutes with the lid on to meld all of those flavors together. Then remove the lid, give the pot a stir, and let it cook for another 10 to 15 minutes without the lid, stirring about halfway through again. Cooking the baked beans without the lid helps the sauce to thicken up into more of a glaze, and you can remove them from the oven whenever the texture is to your liking. Again, because some cans of beans have more liquid than others to start with, the timing here might be different for different folks, so do just keep an eye on them. The beauty of this recipe is how quickly it cooks, because we've started with canned baked beans instead of white beans, and we're using a fairly high temperature to reduce the sauce quickly. So don't forget to stir the pot because you don't want beans sticking to the bottom of it. I personally like to remove the baked beans from the oven when they look a little something like this. I can still stir the pot, but it has thickened up a bit, but not too much, because the baked beans will naturally thicken up even more once they cool down slightly. And I do like them to still have a bit of movement to them rather than being overly thick and glazy. If you guys could smell my kitchen right now, you would immediately run to the market to grab the ingredients to make this recipe, because it smells amazing. Now, my version does lean a bit more on the sweet rather than spicy side, but if you'd like to add a bit more spice, you could finely dice a jalapeno pepper and add it with the onion, or add a little chili powder or cayenne powder with the paprika. So feel free to tweak it to your liking. But I, for one, love it like this, and I am ready to take my bite. Now that this has had just a couple of minutes to cool down, it has thickened up into the perfect texture. So let's take a bite. Unbelievably good. So good. You can taste plenty of the bacon. You get the smokiness from the paprika. You get the sweetness from the maple syrup and the blackstrap molasses. And it's just the perfect texture and consistency. The beans are perfectly soft. The sauce is glazy and thick. This is gonna disappear so fast. Now, even though I have made and eaten this recipe dozens and dozens of times, it was the first time making it in this kitchen. And so I did a test run last week, made this entire batch, gave the leftovers to Emily, my social media manager, who then took them home to her husband. And he said they were the best ever baked beans he has ever had. So if you make this batch for a holiday or a party, I don't think you're gonna have any leftovers. But if you do, you can store them in the fridge for four to five days or in the freezer for up to three months. I hope you guys enjoyed today's recipe video. And if you did, make sure to give it a thumbs up. Let me know what other one pot recipes you wanna see next. And with that, I will see you in the next video.