Stove-top Baked Beans

Why is it that baked beans are so popular around the Fourth of July, but making them usually requires several hours of baking in a hot oven? Where we live it gets pretty darn sizzling in the summer and the last thing we want to do is keep the oven going for hours; the AC is working hard enough as it is.

Here’s a recipe I pulled from the New York Times back in February that calls for cooking the beans on the stove top, a much preferred summer cooking method. Richly flavored with bacon, molasses, ketchup and vinegar, these not-really-baked beans have plenty of the baked bean goodness you expect, and are great with hot dogs.

Stove-top Baked Beans Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 lb dry small white beans, such as cannellini or navy beans (or 3 15-ounce cans of white beans)
• 2 whole cloves
• 1 onion, peeled and halved lengthwise
• 2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup ketchup
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 3 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
• 1½ teaspoons dry mustard powder
• ¼ teaspoon Tabasco sauce (or cayenne pepper if you don't have Tabasco)
• ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1 slice raw thick-cut bacon
• 5 slices cooked thick-cut bacon, chopped
• ¼ red onion, finely chopped

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