Franks and Beans

[project]

Off and on for years have wanted some good ways to 'fix up' canned baked beans. Now have one way I like:

Ingredients

33 ounces of canned baked beans, e.g., two cans of "Bush's Best Original Baked Beans, Seasoned with Bacon and Brown Sugar", 16.5 ounces per can

1/2 pound Bratwurst, e.g., three pieces of "Johnsonville Smoked Brats" sold six per pound

1 large yellow globe onion, raw weight about 1 1/4 pounds, peeled and coarsely cut (one cutting suggestion below)

2 T Worcestershire sauce, e.g., Lea & Perrins

1 1/2 T prepared yellow mustard, e.g., French's

1 T hot sauce, e.g., "Frank's Red Hot Original"

olive oil

black pepper

Steps

In a pot of about 3 quarts, add olive oil to coat the bottom for good heat conduction between the pot and the food.

Over medium heat, cook onion until soft with some large brown patches.

Remove onion and drain.

Slice each bratwurst into, say, four pieces and brown. Get some spots quite brown. Remove and drain.

Discard remaining olive oil.

To pot. add beans, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, and hot sauce. Add ground pepper to taste. Mix.

Add browned onion and bratwurst, mix, heat through slowly, and serve.

Remarks

Dish is good hot and also at room temperature.

How I cut the onion: Regard the onion as a sphere with the root end the south pole. Regarding the knife as a plane, cut the onion in half by passing the plane through the line between the south pole and the north pole. Cut each half into quarters by again passing the plane through the line between the south pole and the north pole. For each of the four pieces, cut off the south pole and the north pole and, then, cut the quarter in half by passing the plane of the knife through the equator. Now have eight pieces. During the cooking, the onion layers separate. The larger pieces are relatively large, but this is okay for a 'manly man' dish!

It's a lot of onion, but cooked until softened and then heated with the rest the onion is good.

For a 'manly man' dish, a lot of browning of the onion and sausage is good.

The dish is also good with 1/2 pound of frankfurters instead of bratwurst. The bratwurst mentioned above smell a lot like bacon when being browned, and with frankfurters intend to try including some bacon.

The yellow mustard is curiously good at making the flavors bright.

Tried including some molasses but didn't like it.

Intend to try including some garlic. So far my guess is that garlic will not help.

Suggestions for changes?

[rooftop1000]

You have certainly elevated the dish from chunk up some hot dogs and add to pot with can of beans

my only suggestion would be to put it all in a cassarole dish and bake till browned and bubbly maybe with some 1 inch squares of sliced bacon and some more brown sugar on top....serve with sweet cornbread and bowls

tracey

[project]

tracey:

Thanks for mentioning the idea of baking in a casserole dish: Yes, some years ago in my efforts with this dish, I would put the results in a Pyrex glass casserole dish, either 1 1/2 quarts or 2 quarts, and heat uncovered at full power in microwave, rotating occasionally for even heating.

One result can be reduction of the liquid with the beans, concentration of flavors, some browning on top, and a more dense result. This approach remains an option, but what I described just heating through in the pot is faster and okay.

For putting bacon on top, okay, but before trying it I would guess that would want the bacon at least partly 'rendered' of its high fat content before adding it to the beans. Is that what you do?

I just did get some bacon and intend to try it with frankfurters (the bratwurst already taste a lot like bacon): I am hoping to cook the bacon first and use the bacon fat instead of the olive oil when browning the onion and sausage. Didn't mention this because haven't tried it yet.

For more brown sugar, maybe! The dish seems to me to have enough brown sugar now, but I could be wrong: I have little experience cooking with brown sugar so have little judgment.

The flavor mix I am liking is the browning of the large onion pieces and sausage and the Worcestershire sauce, yellow mustard, and hot sauce on the 'base' flavor (piano left hand?) of the beans. The flavors can be something like 'BBQ' beans, and in this I am surprised at the role of the mustard.

[heidih]

Thanks for mentioning the idea of baking in a casserole dish:  Yes, some years ago in my efforts with this dish, I would put the results in a Pyrex glass casserole dish, either 1 1/2 quarts or 2 quarts, and heat uncovered at full power in microwave, rotating occasionally for even heating.

←

I really don't think microwaving can be compared to baking in this case. Yes they may have a similar reduction in liquid, but there is a while lot more going on in the oven- please give it a try- also that will end up rendering the fat from the suggested bacon and crisping it up.

[project]

Yes, oven baking will likely give much better 'baked' flavor than just heating in a microwave! An oven should give some browning that will taste much better than the somewhat ersatz browning in a microwave.

I have not tried oven baking because I was in a hurry! But, now that I have a mix of flavors I like, good oven baking should raise the quality by at least one notch from the casserole dish and at least one more notch from oven baking!

Sounds like I should try it and report!

For the bacon, yes, I can believe that it will 'render' when baked on the surface: My concern was that the fat from the rendering would, then, stay in the dish with the beans, etc.; if using only a little bacon, then the amount of added fat should be acceptable and should add nicely to the flavor, and the bacon should help the appearance.

For a 'manly man' like me who essentially never tries to achieve much in appearance in anything (mathematics with D. Knuth's TeX and software source code being exceptions!), a better appearance of this dish might make me breakout in sweat from too much stimulation of fantasies about getting this dish, back when I was young and rich, carried proudly, steaming hot, by a cook about 5' 6", 115 pounds, a 22 inch waist, waist length auburn hair, tied with a large bow, in a gingham dress with a long skirt with a white apron with ruffles and tied in back with a huge bow ..., but I digress!

Back to reality, two questions:

(1) To help with the browning of the top and the reduction, I assume that the baking is uncovered?

(2) The temperature of the oven is, maybe, 325 F, that is, hot enough to be 'baking' with slow browning and still cool enough so that do get the dish heated through with some reduction in the liquids without too much browning on the surfaces?

I've got a lot of beans, onions, Frankfurters, Bratwurst, and bacon and over the next two weeks or so should do some more trials and report.

Thanks for the suggestions!

[Dave Hatfield]

olive oil

How I cut the onion:  Regard the onion as a sphere with the root end the south pole.  Regarding the knife as a plane, cut the onion in half by passing the plane through the line between the south pole and the north pole.  Cut each half into quarters by again passing the plane through the line between the south pole and the north pole.  For each of the four pieces, cut off the south pole and the north pole and, then, cut the quarter in half by passing the plane of the knife through the equator.  Now have eight pieces.  During the cooking, the onion layers separate.  The larger pieces are relatively large, but this is okay for a 'manly man' dish!

Suggestions for changes?

←

Good recipe. About onion cutting, however.... My suggestions:

-Cut off the poles first.

-Then cut in half, North to South.

-Lay each hemisphere cut side down & cut N to S in parallel as many slices as you wish (the more slices the finer the dice) being careful to keep the hemisphere together.

- Now, turn the sliced hemisphere 90 degrees & cut across the slices (East to West or West To East??). Again make these cuts as fine as you wish.

Doing it this way is efficient and allows you to make your dice as fine as needed for the dish you are cooking. Works for potatoes & any 'roundish' vegetable.

[project]

Dave,

Thanks!

Yes, there are at least several quite different ways to cut an onion!

Your way gives diced onion, which is likely by far the most commonly desired result and clearly a leading option for this dish.

The way I suggested does not end up with dice! Instead, get some quite large pieces, each piece roughly a trapezoid with one of the two parallel sides quite short, that is, get nearly isosceles triangles. Or, each piece is nearly one eighth of the surface of a sphere.

The larger pieces, when cooked in the fat with convex side down, can yield some quite large brown patches and, thus, a lot of browned flavor.

The reason I keep the poles attached until near the end of the cutting is to help keep the layers together, but your approach will also work.

There was an onion cutting thread at

http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=102316

One approach I have used in my awful attempts at Chinese cooking and might be better here is to start by cutting off the pole pieces with the plane of the knife perpendicular to the line between the poles and passing through (1) the arctic circle and then (2) the antarctic circle, discarding these two pole pieces or saving them for diced onion. For this dish, could just go ahead and include the diced onion!

Then with the rest of the globe, with the knife oriented so that the line between the poles is in the plane of the knife, use just the tip of the knife to cut through the outer, dry layer of the onion and peel that layer away and discard it.

Now have a clean globe except missing the poles down to the arctic circle and the antarctic circle.

Then again with the knife oriented so that the line between the poles is in the plane of the knife, use just the tip of the knife to cut along a line of longitude through 1-3 layers of the onion. Rotate about 60 degrees of longitude and repeat until all those layers are in roughly rectangular pieces.

Then repeat with next 1-3 layers possibly replacing the 60 degrees with something a little larger.

The result is a lot of relatively flat and nearly rectangular pieces.

So, just managed to cut a lot of nearly flat, nearly rectangular pieces out of a nearly spherical onion!