In honor of summer finally making its presences known in Chicago for Memorial Day weekend, my friends hosted a lovely pot luck style BBQ. I have been struggling to find great slow cooker recipes that are summer friendly, yet I seemed to find a winner with these Betty Crocker BBQ Beans.
Recipe:
Ingredients:
– 4 cans of low sodium black beans
– 4 cans of Northern Great beans (or Great northern beans)
– 1 cup of black bean juice
– 2 cups of ketchup
– 1 cup of dark brown sugar
– 2 teaspoons of ground mustard
– 2 tablespoons of cider vinegar
– 1/2 cup of molasses
– 2 medium onions
– 1 package of turkey bacon
When I was reviewing the invite to the BBQ, I had noticed that about 30 people were planning on coming so I thought I should double my bean recipe to accommodate for more than the 12 people that the beans would serve. Thirty people did not show up to the BBQ. The serving size of twelve would have been perfect because now I’m eating beans for days, but onto the prep.
The first uh oh comes with the molasses. The recipe called for light molasses. Now, perhaps that is to be healthy or perhaps molasses comes in lighter colors, but I couldn’t find any light molasses so I went with regular molasses. (And no, I wouldn’t be able to tell you the difference between light and regular molasses if I had to. Instead I would google that as I should have done at the grocery store to see if it really matter.) Then came the matter of buying medium sized onions. At this store, there were only bags of small onions, so instead I used 4 small onions to equal two medium onions. Again, I am not sure if one can consider that equal, but I decided that yes, 4 small onions = 2 medium onions.
Otherwise, this is a very easy recipe to make. I first sautéed the onions on a sauce pan for 10 minutes (yay for me following directions well this time!). Then I cooked the turkey bacon. I must admit that I am not a big bacon fan, and have had little experience cooking bacon, so many of my pieces of bacon came out charred or slightly under cooked (but I reasoned with myself those pieces would just cook more in the crockpot- debatable). So I can say I have mastered the art of making very crispy bacon in a case any one was worried. This took the longest to prep as I could not fit a whole package of bacon on one sauce pan. However, once all the bacon was cooked, I chopped the bacon into 1/2 inch – 1 inch pieces and added it to the bowl. Only then did I turn the crock pot on high for 3.5 hours. I did at one point remove the crockpot from the wall plug in for a 15 minute period in which I transferred the beans from point a to point b, but the crock pot was still very hot, so the beans kept cooking I believe.
Review:
A very big hit! The next day I brought some leftover beans to my cousin who is a chef’s house and he approved. I must admit that made me feel pretty good about these beans! Everyone who had some liked them! A crowd pleaser!
The Nitty Gritty:
– Total Cost: $25.00 – I had to buy cider vinegar and the molasses
– Total time: 4 hours – if you know how to cook bacon it would be less
– Serving size: 24 – 30
This recipe makes beans on beans on beans, so be prepared or half.
Crock-a-Dile Pot 