Smoky Baked Beans

I love this recipe! It’s a great example of a recipe that you can alter in a lot of ways: canned beans work well; use fresh veggies that are a day or two past their prime; any kind of soup base you have will work, and they’re all a little different; cubed ham is a great addition for the carnivores in your life; shallots are also a great addition. Couple this dish with a crusty, whole grain bread and you’ve got a delicious fall meal full of good stuff — and on the cheap. Thanks for a great recipe!

I don’t normally take the time to write reviews, but I’m STILL waiting on these beans to be done so, here I am. I started soaking the beans at 8am and they went into the crockpot at 10am as per the directions. I followed the recipe exactly. So far, I have added an extra cup of water, and extra cup of chicken broth (because the water killed the flavor) and some more ketchup and brown sugar. It is 5pm and the beans are STILL cooking and STILL hard. Wish I could comment on the taste, but alas we are still waiting on that. Looks like we won’t be having these for dinner tonight. They smell fabulous, though…give them a go. Just don’t expect to eat them any time soon.

These were AMAZING! My husband said they were by far the best baked beans he has ever had. A couple of tweaks I made, were, I had only regular paprika so I added a couple of teaspoons of liquid smoke, and I browned up some diced Kielbasa and added that too. Oh, and I used canned Northern beans too instead of whole- just dumped the whole can in and omitted the 1/2 cup water.

The recipe is good, but a little too spicy for my wife and me. As another reviewer commented, soaking the beans for only two hours didn’t do the trick. The beans were still very hard. We heated the leftovers on the stove for several hours two days later and they were just right, Surely the beans need to be soaked overnight.

I followed this recipe exactly and the beans were hard. So, I turned it on for another four hours on high with more water and three hours in they are still hard. I think the cooking or soaking time on the recipe is wrong because I have a new slow cooker and it usually gets my slow cooker recipes done more quickly then the recipe time suggests. The flavor is wonderful though!

I try to appreciate vegetarian recipes more often, but this one left me wanting big chunks of smoked meat in it. It’s OK as a small side dish. Took a lot longer to cook, and I added water twice, but I don’t blame the recipe for that. Beans seem to have a mind of their own.

I cooked this recipe on the day I saw it on the show. Followed it to a T except that I used red kidney beans because that’s what I had. I only had 4 hours of prep time before dinner so I skipped the slow cooker and cooked it in a dutch oven for about an hour or so. I did add a little more liquid to keep it from drying out. The resulting beans tasted like Bush’s grilling beans and I love it! I never buy beans in a can now.

The second time I made it, I used the slow cooker. I plugged it in around 11PM and turned it off at 8AM the next day. The beans were super tender.

I thought the beans had an awesome flavor. So much tastier and healthier than canned and soooo easy. I followed the recipe exactly.

I agree. These beans were decent, just not great. However, my family enjoyed them. I just wasnt wowed. I didnt have white beans so I used pinto and I added 1 inch chunks of browned boneless rib meat. Soaked the beans for more than 24 hours but still they were a little hard.
Also, even after adding water in the last half hour, they were a bit dry.

I did add 2 pieces of bacon just to beef up the smokiness. Decent beans but not the best I ever had