Recipe: Boston Baked Beans

Boston Baked Beans
rec.food.recipes/J. Helman/2001

This is my mother's recipe for Boston-style baked beans. She originally used pea (navy) beans, and that's what her written recipe calls for. However, in later years she started using Great Northern beans instead. The other ingredients and instructions are the same regardless of which type of bean you use.

1 lb. pea (navy) beans
1/2 lb. salt pork
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
4 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 cup dark molasses
1 teaspoon dry mustard
4 tablespoons ketchup
1 minced onion
2 to 2 1/2 cups boiling water
2 tablespoons pickle relish
Vegetable oil

Wash beans. Take out any bad beans, put good beans in dish of water, cover, and soak overnight. (To ensure there is room for the beans to rehydrate, use a large bowl and cover the beans with an extra 2 or 3 inches of water.) Next day, take out any remaining bad beans. Parboil beans until skins begin to burst. Drain the water. Add all other ingredients to beans except salt pork. Cut salt pork into 1/4 inch cubes. Put beans and salt pork in baking dish or bean pot, alternating beans and salt pork in layers, with salt pork on bottom and top. Put in cold oven. Turn oven on to 3500 Fahrenheit and cook approximately 5 hours, adding water and vegetable oil as necessary to keep beans from drying.

Option 1 (Vegetarian): Delete all meat and mix two or three additional tablespoons of vegetable oil into the bean mixture.

Option 2 (Crock Pot): Use only as much water as is needed to almost cover beans. Cook on low all day or on high for at least 6 hours. Before serving, cook 1/2 to 1 hour uncovered on high (to thicken beans). For crock pot vegetarian beans, use a total of only one or two
tablespoons of vegetable oil, for beans with salt pork, use no vegetable oil.