Recipe Roundup: Baked Beans

With Memorial Day around the corner, we're starting to think about picnics and barbecues. Call us crazy, but one of our favorites is a ubiquitous side dish that others may not give a second thought: baked beans.

We've rounded up some recipes that are sure to elevate your next batch, whether you start from scratch or even dress up some canned beans.

Bon Appétit's Hot and Smokey Baked Beans features bacon, dark beer and chipotle chilies. Smitten Kitchen adapts the recipe and skips the bacon.
The Kitchen Sink starts with dried Great Northerns and ends up with Maple Baked Beans.
Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks incorporates Lindeman's Frambois Lambic beer, dried berries and smoked paprika into her Berry Beer Baked Beans.
Want to go heavier on the meat, try The Amateur Gourmet's version of Baked Red Kidney Beans with Chorizo.
No time for dried beans? Try Melissa Clark's Fake Baked Beans, via The Wednesday Chef.
Serious Eats also makes great use of canned beans with 17th Street’s Tangy Pit Beans.
Can't pick a favorite bean? How about Simply Recipe's Three-Bean Baked Beans.

(Images: Clockwise from left, The Kitchen Sink, Steve Cohen/Epicurious, Smitten Kitchen)

Comments (1)

Gotta say, I think our local Mennonite restaurant has the best baked beans ever. They use 5-6 different types of beans, including green beans. Green beans! In baked beans! Seriously fantastic.

posted by Kakugori on May 15th 2009 at 6:23pm
view Kakugori's profile