Baked Beans with Apples

Baked Beans with Apples - so good!

This post goes out to my nephew Adam who really enjoys these baked beans.

This is another recipe inspired by Mme Benoit. The original is found in her Cooks at Home book, published in 1987. It is a true French Canadian recipe featuring maple syrup and was passed down through five generations of her family. Never one to be bound by tradition, I’ve made some changes: substituting bacon for the original salt pork and brown rice syrup for the maple syrup (because that’s what I had on hand), adding some molasses, and omitting the optional half cup of rum poured over the apples just before serving. Burying the mustard-covered onion in the beans is part of Mme Benoit’s original instruction. And yes, you can eat the onion when the beans are all baked. It’s mushy good by then.

About the pre-cooked beans: I began by using the Short Soak Stove Top Beans method described in an earlier post. If you follow that post, remember to double the amounts to get the measure of pre-cooked beans needed for this recipe and keep the cooking water, because you will use it in this recipe. If you use another method to pre-cook the beans or want to use canned beans instead, you will need 12 cups of pre-cooked beans and you will need to add enough water to just cover the beans.

About the brown rice syrup: Brown rice syrup is about half as sweet as sugar. It’s said to offer some health benefits over some other sweeteners and that’s how it wound up in my pantry. Last year, there was a lot of controversy about arsenic in brown rice syrup. After looking into the brand of brown rice syrup I have been using from Lundberg Family Farms, I am satisfied with the safety of their products. If you are interested, you can check them here. What’s really surprising to me in the whole debate is that neither Canada nor the US set limits on the levels of arsenic in foods. If you are interested in the issue, the University of Guelph Food Safety Network is a good place to start your reading.

About the maple syrup: Of course, good old Canadian maple syrup is authentic, tasty and has health benefits, too, and you can check them out here.

All that being said, whether you use brown rice syrup or maple syrup, I hope you will try making these delicious baked beans with apples. They go great with a cooked ham and a crowd of hungry people. Just ask Adam.

Baked Beans with Apples

Get ready for the bean pot

Preheat oven to 325º F.

4 cups dried navy beans, pre-cooked to make about 12 cups, and the water in which they were cooked (I used my Short Soak Stove Top Beans method)

4 strips of bacon to line pan

½ lb bacon, chopped

1 large onion, peeled and sliced in half

1 tsp dry mustard

1 cup brown rice syrup or maple syrup

Bacon strips to line pan

1 tbsp coarse salt

½ cup molasses

2 to 4 apples, well washed, unpeeled, cored and sliced

1 cup brown sugar

½ cup butter

Line a large, deep baking pan with bacon strips.

Place the pre-cooked beans and their cooking water on top of the bacon strips.

Burying the onions

Mix in the chopped bacon.

Cover the onion halves in dry mustard until all of the mustard sticks to them. Bury the onion halves in the middle of the beans.

Add the syrup and molasses to the beans.

Sprinkle the coarse salt over the beans.

Cover and bake for 3 hours. Remove from oven and stir beans gently. If they are getting dry, slowly add hot water to them.

Cover and return to oven for 1 hour.

Topped with apples, brown sugar and butter

Meanwhile, prepare the apples for the topping and cream together the brown sugar and butter.

Remove beans from oven and uncover. Place the apple slices on top of the beans, as close together as possible. Spread with sugar and butter mixture.

Return to the oven, uncovered, for 1 hour.

Serve some of the apples with each portion of beans.

Makes about 12 to 14 servings.


Printable Recipe for MA's Baked Beans with Apples

Dig into baked beans with apples

A Quick Soak for Dry Beans

Who has time to cook with dried beans?

Apparently, I do. (And maybe you do, too.)

And, why would you want to go through the trouble when you can open a can?

All beans are nutritional goldmines bringing you beneficial dietary fibre, low fat protein, vitamins, minerals and no cholesterol. But cooking your own beans rather than opting for a can gives you a healthy edge because, like any scratch cooking, you’ve got control. Canned beans are high in sodium. Start with dry beans and you’re in charge of how much salt is added. Canned beans can have a shelf life of up to five years and that means they have preservatives added and/or the can has a white plastic lining. That lining may contain Bisphenol A, which may or may not lead to cancer or reproductive problems. Start with dry beans and you don’t have to worry about that – or recycling the can.

Dried beans are economical, too, usually about half the price of canned beans. One pound of dry beans will give you about six cups of cooked beans. You’d need about four 15-ounce cans of beans to get six cups of cooked beans. So even with a good sale on canned beans (which we don’t want anyway, right?) the dried beans will be cheaper.

And one last reason to try cooking beans from scratch … their taste and texture will be better than canned.

There are many ways to take beans from dried to cooked. Search “quick cooking beans” and you can see for yourself the length and breadth of the dried bean debate. The method I’m going to describe is taken primarily from one of my cooking heroines, Mme Jehane Benoit, and is rewritten here to be a little easier to follow. Now the “quick” does not mean “instant.” We’re simply cutting the soaking time. You’ll still need to give yourself a few hours to turn the dehydrated legumes into succulent little morsels.

Once you have transformed the dry beans into cooked beans, you can use them any number of ways: soups, salads, casseroles, maybe even the Baked Beans with Apples I’ll be posting next. You can also freeze the cooked beans for future use.

MA’s Short Soak Stove Top Beans

1 lb (about 2 cups) dried beans – any kind, except split green or yellow peas or black-eyed peas, which should not be soaked and consequently not used for this method (Navy beans are shown in this post.)

8 cups rapidly boiling water

1 tbsp molasses

Pick through the dried beans. The surface of the bean should be smooth, firm, and uniform in size and color. Remove any beans that are broken, blistered looking, wrinkled or shriveled. Take out any tiny stones or dirt. Wash beans in cold water. Remove any floaters, as they will not cook properly.

Place beans in a large pot.

Cover the beans with the boiling water. Add molasses.

Cover and let stand for one hour.

Foam forming on top of beans

Uncover and bring to a rapid boil in the same water for 2 to 3 minutes.

You may get some foam gathering on top of the water as the beans cook. Skim off the foam. You can minimize heavy foaming by adding 2 tbsp of butter or oil to the beans.

Cooked and ready to use

Cover and lower the heat. Simmer for about 1 ½ hours or until the beans are starting to become tender.

IF the beans are going to be used in another dish in which they will cook further, such as baked beans, stop here and add the ingredients needed for the dish, then continue cooking.

IF the beans are going to be used in a dish without further cooking, such as in a salad, keep them simmering until they have reached the firmness/mushiness you prefer.

IF you don’t know how you are going to use the beans, continue simmering until they have reached the firmness/mushiness you want. You can always cut down on the cooking time if they end up in a recipe where they’ll be cooked further.

Either way, cook slowly and test the beans often to see how they’re doing.

Printable Recipe for MA's Short Soak Stove Top Beans