Slow Cooker Baked Beans
Dried haricot beans cooked on low for 8 hours in a molasses, tomato and mustard sauce with bacon until soft, sticky and sweet.
Photograph credit: Beans Food Meals - Free photo on Pixabay by HotelArizonaHD · Pixabay Content License · Pixabay
How to Cook Slow Cooker Baked Beans
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Put the beans, bacon and onion in the slow cooker.
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Mix the tomatoes, tomato purée, treacle, sugar, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, water, salt and paprika. Pour over the beans and stir.
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Cover and cook on low for 8 hours, without lifting the lid, until the beans are completely tender.
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If the sauce is thin, uncover, switch to high and cook for 30 minutes.
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Stir and taste for seasoning before serving.
What Can Go Wrong
- Soak the beans overnight.
- Do not lift the lid during cooking.
- Reduce the sauce with the lid off if it is too thin.
About This Recipe
Soak the beans overnight. That is the one thing to do the evening before, because dried beans cooked straight in a slow cooker with acid and sugar can stay hard for hours. Soaked beans swell and soften evenly, and the long, gentle heat does the rest.
Use haricot beans, also sold as navy beans, which have a creamy texture and hold their shape. Drain the soaking water, rinse them, and put them in the cooker with the bacon, onion and the sauce. Sugar and acid slow down softening, so some cooks add the sweet ingredients only for the last hour. If your beans are old, do the same.
Do not lift the lid. A slow cooker loses heat each time it is opened, and adds 20 minutes to the cooking time. Leave it alone for the first 6 hours, then check the beans for tenderness. They should be soft all the way through and the sauce thick enough to coat a spoon.
If the sauce is thin at the end, take the lid off, switch to high and let it reduce for 30 minutes. The beans improve overnight in the fridge, and are excellent on toast, with a jacket potato or alongside sausages.
What to Serve It With
Buttered toast · Jacket potatoes · Sausages · Fried eggs
Storing Leftovers
Keeps for 5 days in the fridge or 3 months in the freezer.
Common Questions
How long does Slow Cooker Baked Beans take to make?
15 minutes of preparation and 8 hours of cooking, plus 8 hours of Soaking overnight, so allow 16 hours 15 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 10.
The Numbers per Serving
Per serving, an approximate calculation from the ingredient list. Treat it as a rough guide: part of the energy comes from foods, or weights per item, with no recorded source. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked.
First published ; last changed .
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