Virginia Baked Beans
(from kylerhea’s recipe box)
Cooks note: If your bacon produced a large amount of grease then you may need to set aside some of it for later use. You really don’t want more than about a 1/4 cup of bacon grease for this recipe. Anything more and it will be greasy baked beans.
Source: The Country Cook
Categories: June2013, Summer, Winter, beans, picnic fare
Ingredients
- 1/2 pound bacon
- 1 medium onion
- 3 (16 oz.) cans Pork And Beans (undrained)
- 3 tbsp. mustard (yellow or dijon)
- 3/4 cup maple syrup
- 2/3 cup ketchup
- 1/3 cup molasses
- 1/4 cup brown sugar
- salt And pepper, to taste
Directions
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Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
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In a skillet, fry bacon until crispy, then crumble bacon. Don’t toss the bacon drippings. You should have about a 1/4 cup of drippings left in the pan if your bacon was fatty enough.
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Finely chop the onions and saute them over medium heat in the bacon drippings until onion is clear (it will brown up a little too from frying in the bacon fat). If you used very lean bacon (which I don’t recommend) then you may have to add a tablespoon or so of oil. But the bacon fat is really what adds the flavor here. At this point I will add in a little salt & pepper.
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Now mix all the remaining ingredients together and add the onions (with bacon fat) and crumbled bacon and pour into a 9×13 glass baking dish and bake covered (with aluminum foil) for about an hour (until brown and bubbly).
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If you like your beans to be a little less sauce-y (which I do), take the aluminum foil off and bake for about another 20-30minutes, stirring occasionally. This will thicken up the sauce a bit. Depending on your oven, this could take up to 45 minutes. Just be sure to stir the beans occasionally. The longer you cook it, the thicker it will get.
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Stir before serving.