Pioneer
Saturday Night Baked Beans
The backbone of the New Brunswick table
New Brunswick historical recordEvery New Brunswick family had their pot of beans going on Saturday. Navy beans slow-cooked with salt pork and molasses in the woodstove overnight — the smell alone was worth getting through the week for. During the Depression, this was often the meal, not just a side.
Source: New Brunswick historical record
Ingredients
- 2 cups dried navy beans
- ¼ lb salt pork, scored
- 1 medium onion, peeled and halved
- 3 tbsp molasses
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- 1 tsp dry mustard
- ½ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp black pepper
- Boiling water to cover
Instructions
- Soak beans overnight in cold water. Drain and rinse.
- Place beans in a pot, cover with fresh water, and parboil for 30 minutes until skins just begin to crack. Drain.
- Place onion halves in the bottom of a bean pot or heavy Dutch oven. Add the beans.
- Score the salt pork rind at ½-inch intervals and press it into the top of the beans.
- Mix molasses, brown sugar, mustard, salt, and pepper with enough boiling water to cover the beans by 1 inch. Pour over beans.
- Cover tightly and bake at 250°F (120°C) for 6–8 hours, checking every couple of hours and adding hot water as needed to keep beans just covered.
- Remove lid for the last 30 minutes to brown the top. The salt pork should be crisp.
✦ Kitchen Notes
- In the Depression years, this pot often fed a family for two days. Leftover beans were thinned with water for bean soup on Monday.
- The woodstove was kept going all Saturday, so the beans went in after supper on Friday and cooked through the night.