Baked beans

I’ve seen a bunch of recipes for baked beans that use ketchup, bbq sauce, and molasses. This is pretty funny to me since I’d describe a basic bbq sauce as ketchup blended with molasses … and so I figured it’d be worth building a recipe that increases the quantity of vinegar and molasses, and substitute in tomato paste to replace the ketchup.

By doing this, you can also delay adding your vinegar, holding its snap until the end.

Ingredients

• 1 cup white beans (Great Northern and Yellow Eye are both great)
• 2 cups water/stock
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 4-5 rashers bacon, chopped (~1/6 lb?)
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 1/4 cup light brown sugar
• 1 Tbsp mustard (2 tsp dry)
• 2 oz tomato paste
• 1/2 tsp smoked paprika, pepper, salt
• 1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar

Preparation

1. Wash, prepare vegetables and bacon. Sort, then rinse the beans. Optionally, soak the beans beforehand. Set the instant pot to saute, and add olive oil. Once the oil is shimmering, add the bacon.
2. Let the bacon fry, then once it’s mostly browned, add the onions. Saute until the onions have browned and are sizzling more than steaming, add the tomato paste to saute for a moment before turning off the instant pot, then adding garlic and spices. If you’re using dry mustard, add it now.
3. Deglaze with stock, stirring to combine, and incorporate the molasses and sugar. Seal and start the pressure cooker on high† for 50 minutes (or your preferred bean-cooking duration.)
4. Once the cooker is done, natural pressure release for 15-20 minutes, then stir in apple cider vinegar. If using prepared mustard, stir it in now.

Notes

• † If your pressure cooker has both pressure (low, high) and temperature (less, normal, more) options, make sure you use the high pressure, more temperature setting. Otherwise, your beans may take some time!
• The sauce may be a little thin at the end of cooking; it can be left with a loose-fitting lid on slow cook on high to reduce the broth more.