The Bean Pot of Memory

Cleaning out garages is an awful job, and I put it off until mine was so overstuffed I couldn’t jam in anything more. But there are rewards too, like finding old kitchen treasures and remembering the wonderful food associated with them.

Poking through cobwebs in one dark corner, I discovered a box of kitchen implements, each neatly wrapped in yellowed, crackly newspaper. The largest bundle contained a chipped crockery bowl, the one my mother always used for baked beans. I remember the rich fragrance as the beans cooked for hours. It was a simple dish, just navy beans, a chunk of ham, an onion stuck with cloves, brown sugar and a layer of bacon slices over the top. And of course the bowl. The beans would not have been the same without it.

I always ate sliced tomatoes with the beans, nothing more, and this was one of my favorite meals. The flavor, so tantalizing, came back to me as I dusted off the bowl, so I brought it to the kitchen and set about resurrecting the old recipe--nothing had ever been written down.

Here it is, along with other vintage bean recipes that deserve another chance. Most are quite simple because they come from an era when cooks used only a handful of ingredients, varying these with great skill for different effects.

The essential ingredient for my mother’s beans is, of course, an old crockery bowl. That you’ll have to hunt for at garage sales and thrift shops--unless you too have a garage stuffed with long forgotten kitchenware.

Mother’s Baked Beans in a Bowl

Active Work Time: 30 minutes * Total Preparation Time: 5 1/2 hours plus 8 hours soaking

After the beans soaked overnight, my mother would bring them to a boil, adding a pinch of baking soda just before they boiled, then drain them and proceed with the recipe. Supposedly, this made the beans more digestible. That step has been eliminated here, but you can reinstate it if you like.

2 cups dried Great Northern beans

Water

1 ham hock, about 3/4 pound

3 tablespoons light brown sugar, packed

1 tablespoon molasses

1/2 teaspoon dry mustard

1 teaspoon salt, or to taste

1 onion

3 whole cloves

6 slices bacon

Sliced tomatoes

Place the beans in a bowl, add water to cover generously and let soak overnight.

The next day, drain and rinse the beans. Place them in a large saucepan or Dutch oven and add the ham hock and 6 cups of water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and cook the beans, partially covered, until the skins wrinkle, about 1 hour. Using a slotted spoon, lift the beans into a large crockery bowl or deep casserole. Reserve the cooking liquid. There should be about 3 cups. Lift out the ham hock. Remove the skin and fat and cut the meat into bite-size pieces. Add the ham to the beans.

Heat the oven to 325 degrees.

Combine the brown sugar, molasses, mustard and salt in a small bowl. Add 1/2 cup of the reserved liquid and stir until the seasonings are dissolved and blended. Pour this over the beans and ham. Peel the onion. Cut off the top and root ends but leave the onion whole. Stick the cloves into the onion, and bury it in the beans. Add the remaining cooking liquid to the beans. Cover and place them in the oven. Bake 2 hours, checking the oven temperature after 30 minutes; if the beans boil too hard, reduce the heat. If the liquid is not simmering, increase the heat to 350 degrees.

Remove the beans from the oven and lay the bacon slices over the top. Increase the heat to 350 degrees, return the beans to the oven and bake uncovered 2 hours longer. Add water if the beans should become too dry. The beans should be juicy but not wet. Taste and add more salt if needed. Accompany with a plate of tomato slices.

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8 servings. Each serving: 140 calories; 493 mg sodium; 9 mg cholesterol; 4 grams fat; 1 grams saturated fat; 19 grams carbohydrates; 7 grams protein; 3.72 grams fiber.

Beer-Baked Beans

Active Work Time: 30 minutes * Total Preparation Time: 3 hours plus 8 hours soaking

Another handwritten recipe produced this dish. The original suggests serving the beans topped with chopped onion and cilantro. Early cooks boiled beans until the skins wrinkled before baking them. The way to tell when this stage was reached was to pick up a few beans in a spoon and blow on them. Old editions of the Boston Cooking School Cook Book emphasize that these blown-on beans should be thrown away.

2 cups dried pinto beans

8 cloves garlic, divided

2 Anaheim chiles

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup oil or bacon drippings

2 onions, chopped

2 large tomatoes, peeled and chopped

1 cup beer (not dark beer)

Wash the beans and soak them overnight in water to cover.

The next day, drain the beans and place them in a large saucepan with water to cover generously and 4 cloves of garlic. Bring the beans to a boil, reduce heat and cook, partially covered, until the skins wrinkle, about 1 hour.

To roast the chiles, hold them with tongs directly above a gas flame, turning until charred on all sides, about 10 minutes, or place them beneath the broiler. When charred, put the chiles in a glass bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let them sit until cool enough to handle, about 10 minutes. Remove and discard the skin, then chop the chiles. Set them aside.

Mash the remaining 4 cloves of garlic in the salt until dissolved to a paste. Heat the oil in a skillet over medium heat, add the onions and garlic paste and cook until the onions are tender, 8 to 10 minutes. Add the tomatoes and chiles and cook until the tomatoes are softened, about 5 minutes.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Remove 1 cup of beans with a little of the cooking liquid and mash thoroughly. Drain the remaining beans, reserving the liquid, and place in a bean pot or deep casserole. Stir in the mashed beans, the onion mixture, beer and 1 cup of the reserved liquid.

Bake until the beans are very tender, adding the reserved liquid as needed to keep them from drying out. Accompany with separate bowls of chopped onion and cilantro to add as desired.

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8 servings. Each serving: 146 calories; 407 mg sodium; 0 cholesterol; 7 grams fat; 1 gram saturated fat; 16 grams carbohydrates; 4 grams protein; 3.73 grams fiber.

Baked Lima Beans and Bacon

Active Work Time: 20 minutes

Total Preparation Time: 2 1/2 hours plus 8 hours soaking

Dried limas are usually cooked with ham hocks, but this recipe combines them with bacon. The recipe was contributed by Mrs. Edward T. Smith to a 1923 cookbook put out by the Sarah Daft Home for the Aged in Salt Lake City. The home is still in operation.

1 pound dried small lima beans

Bacon drippings

1 tablespoon sugar

1 tablespoon dry mustard

1 teaspoon salt

Dash paprika

6 slices bacon

Soak the dried limas overnight in water to cover.

In the morning, pour off the liquid. Cover the beans with boiling water and boil 1/2 hour. Drain, reserving the water.

Heat the oven to 325 degrees. Grease a 9-inch square baking pan with bacon drippings.

Combine the sugar, mustard, salt and paprika. Make a layer of beans in the pan, then sprinkle with some of the seasonings. Make additional layers of beans and seasonings until they’re all used up. Cover the beans with bacon slices. Pour the water in which the beans were boiled gently over the contents of the pan just to come even with the bacon slices.

Bake the beans until they’re very tender, 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

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6 servings. Each serving: 178 calories; 557 mg sodium; 8 mg cholesterol; 7 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 21 grams carbohydrates; 8 grams protein; 4.29 grams fiber.

Boston Baked Beans

Active Work Time: 30 minutes * Total Preparation Time: 5 1/2 hours plus 8 hours soaking

This old recipe is slightly revised from the original, which was designed to go with an electric casserole produced by Westinghouse. The original recipe called for cooking the beans with baking soda for half an hour, a step eliminated here. Because my garage clean-out did not uncover an electric casserole, I have substituted an old-fashioned bean pot.

1 pound dried Great Northern beans

1/2 pound salt pork

1/2 cup brown sugar, packed

1/2 teaspoon dry mustard

Dash paprika

Salt

1/4 cup bottled chili sauce

1/4 cup sieved tomato (or tomato puree)

1/2 cup water

1 small onion, peeled

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Wash the beans. Soak them overnight in water to cover generously.

The next day, drain the beans and place in a large saucepan with fresh water. Bring to a boil and cook until the skins wrinkle, about 1 hour.

Heat the oven to 325 degrees.

Drain the beans, reserving the cooking liquid. Place half the beans in a bean pot, top them with a layer of half the salt pork, then add the remaining beans, followed by the salt pork as the top layer.

Combine the sugar, mustard, paprika and salt to taste in a bowl. Add the chili sauce, tomato and 1/2 cup of the cooking liquid. Pour over the beans. Place the onion on top.

Cover the beans and bake them for 2 hours. Check the liquid occasionally. If the beans become too dry, add a little more of the cooking liquid. After 2 hours, increase the heat to 350 degrees and bake until the beans are tender and most of the liquid has been absorbed, 2 hours. If the beans are too wet, bake them an additional 30 minutes.

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8 servings. Each serving: 184 calories; 250 mg sodium; 6 mg cholesterol; 6 grams fat; 2 grams saturated fat; 28 grams carbohydrates; 6 grams protein; 4.45 grams fiber.