One of my favorite summer recipes has got to be BBQ baked beans. Savory, creamy, and packed with flavor, these beans are the perfect side dish to bring to your next backyard cookout, picnic, or barbeque. They have the perfect balance of sweetness and spice, and the long cook time tenderizes the beans and melds all the flavors beautifully!
And the secret? Using canned beans to make the BEST cookout beans ever! That’s right – no soaking, no all day cooking, no driving yourself nuts the night before prepping these beans. Canned beans can be the ULTIMATE cook out side dish in the easiest way.
Why this recipe works
- Using canned beans works because it takes out the hours and hours of soaking beans prior to even using them and makes it simple and easy.
- Baked beans are one of the most common side dishes and can easily be altered with extra ingredients and a variety of great tasting substitutions.
- Because the crock pot is used, this dish is as low effort as it gets while still tasting homemade.
Ingredients
Served hot or cold, BBQ canned bake beans work well as a side or as a main dish with some biscuits and salad. They’re healthy and packed with protein, and can be eaten for lunch, dinner, or even for breakfast with cornbread and scrambled eggs (yes, please!).
Cooking fresh beans takes a lot of time, and the traditional way to make baked beans was, well, to bake them in the oven for hours and hours. It’s not only more labor intensive, but also makes for a very hot kitchen! Lucky for us, cooking with canned beans is super easy and and the beans taste just as good as out of the oven.
Here are the ingredients needed to make canned beans taste better:
- great northern beans, drained and rinsed
- tomato sauce
- diced ham – diced ham comes packaged in the store near deli meat.
- molasses – please note that molasses and maple syrup are not the same ingredient
- white vinegar
- dry mustard, ground black pepper, ground ginger
How to turn Canned beans into BBQ Baked beans
Step 1: Remove the lids from 4 cans of great northern beans, pour into a colander, and rinse beans off. Place rinsed and drained beans into a crock pot.
Step 2: Add can of tomato sauce.
Step 3: Add diced ham pieces.
Step 4: Pour in measured out molasses.
Steps 5-6: Continue adding all spices and seasonings, mix and cover crock pot.
Expert Tips
Avoid mushy beans
- Wait until the end of the cooking process to add salt: You’ll notice this recipe doesn’t call for salt, and that’s for good reason. Salt can interact with the skin of the beans, breaking it down and causing your finished dish to be mushy.
- Calcium and Sugar: Both calcium and sugar will make beans take a long time to tenderize, and molasses contains both. This is why Boston Baked Beans, which traditionally use molasses, ALWAYS has to cook for a long time. Brown sugar contains much less calcium per gram than molasses, so beans can become mushy if cooked for the same length of time. Maple syrup contains a bit more calcium than brown sugar, but still only about half as the same amount of molasses.
Variations for Canned Beans
- Change the meat: Slow Cooker baked beans can be made using a lot of different meat, including ground beef or turkey, sausage, or bacon.
- Make it vegetarian: if you want to make this dish vegetarian, there are a lot of good meat alternatives that you can use in place of the ham, including Beyond Meat or Impossible. You can also use crumbled tofu with a few dashes of liquid smoke.
- Change the bean: While Northern Beans are certainly my preferred choice for this recipe, it can be made with pinto, navy, or even white kidney beans.
- Use a different sweetener: brown sugar and maple syrup MAY work dish, but cook times may need to be adjusted.
FAQ’s
While Boston Baked Beans and Cowboy Beans may seem similar, there are a few distinct differences. Boston Baked Beans usually utilize only a single type of bean, whereas Cowboy Beans usually consist of many different types of beans all mixed together. While Boston Baked Beans use ham (or traditionally salt pork), cowboy beans are made with a mixture of beef and pork, usually sausage or bacon.
Baked beans have been sweetened with everything from honey, brown sugar, and maple syrup, arguably the most famous iteration is Boston Baked Beans, which uses molasses.
Early versions of baked beans used salt pork, later variations tend to use bacon or, in this recipe, ham. Since the end of the Revolutionary War, baked beans have been a favorite dish at Independence Day celebrations, and we’re happy to continue the tradition!
They are not the same ingredient as molasses comes from the sugar cane plant and maple syrup comes from a maple tree. However, they are often used interchangeably. The biggest difference is that maple syrup can burn easier and needs less time to cook. If using maple syrup over molasses, time may need to be adjusted.
Fresh-from-the-oven cornbread or biscuits
BBQ chicken
Ribs
Pulled-pork sandwiches
Corn on the cob
Cook time in Crock Pots
Because slow cookers can vary in strength, it’s important to check your beans towards the end of the cooking process to be sure there is still enough liquid remaining that the beans won’t burn.
Once done, the slow cooker can be programmed to the warm setting for up to 2 hours before serving.
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Canned Baked Beans {Crock Pot}
Ingredients
- 4 cans - 15 oz. each, great northern beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 small can - 8 oz. tomato sauce
- 3/4 cup diced ham
- 1/4 cup molasses
- 2 tablespoons white vinegar
- 2 teaspoons dry mustard
- 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
Instructions
- Remove Great Northern beans from can and dump into colander.
- Rinse beans and shake out water.
- Dump beans into slow cooker.
- Add can of tomato sauce.
- Dump in remainder ingredients including ham, molasses, white vinegar, and all seasonings.
- Stir well to combine.
- Place crock pot on LOW for 5 hours or HIGH for 2 1/2 hours, occasionally stirring.
Recipe Notes
- Wait until the end of the cooking process to add salt: You’ll notice this recipe doesn’t call for salt, and that’s for good reason. Salt can interact with the skin of the beans, breaking it down and causing your finished dish to be mushy.
- Change the meat: Slow Cooker baked beans can be made using a lot of different meat, including ground beef or turkey, sausage, or bacon.
- Make it vegetarian: if you want to make this dish vegetarian, there are a lot of good meat alternatives that you can use in place of the ham, including Beyond Meat or Impossible. You can also use crumbled tofu with a few dashes of liquid smoke.
- Change the bean: While Northern Beans are certainly my preferred choice for this recipe, it can be made with pinto, navy, or even white kidney beans.
- Use a different sweetener: brown sugar and maple syrup MAY work in this dish, but cook times may need to be adjusted as the burn rate is faster.
- Fresh-from-the-oven cornbread or biscuits
- BBQ chicken
- Ribs
- Pulled-pork sandwiches
- Corn on the cob
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