Virginia Baked Beans

(from kylerhea’s recipe box)

Cooks note: If your bacon produced a large amount of grease then you may need to set aside some of it for later use. You really don’t want more than about a 1/4 cup of bacon grease for this recipe. Anything more and it will be greasy baked beans.

Source: The Country Cook

Categories: June2013, Summer, Winter, beans, picnic fare

Ingredients

  • 1/2 pound bacon
  • 1 medium onion
  • 3 (16 oz.) cans Pork And Beans (undrained)
  • 3 tbsp. mustard (yellow or dijon)
  • 3/4 cup maple syrup
  • 2/3 cup ketchup
  • 1/3 cup molasses
  • 1/4 cup brown sugar
  • salt And pepper, to taste

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

  2. In a skillet, fry bacon until crispy, then crumble bacon. Don’t toss the bacon drippings. You should have about a 1/4 cup of drippings left in the pan if your bacon was fatty enough.

  3. Finely chop the onions and saute them over medium heat in the bacon drippings until onion is clear (it will brown up a little too from frying in the bacon fat). If you used very lean bacon (which I don’t recommend) then you may have to add a tablespoon or so of oil. But the bacon fat is really what adds the flavor here. At this point I will add in a little salt & pepper.

  4. Now mix all the remaining ingredients together and add the onions (with bacon fat) and crumbled bacon and pour into a 9×13 glass baking dish and bake covered (with aluminum foil) for about an hour (until brown and bubbly).

  5. If you like your beans to be a little less sauce-y (which I do), take the aluminum foil off and bake for about another 20-30minutes, stirring occasionally. This will thicken up the sauce a bit. Depending on your oven, this could take up to 45 minutes. Just be sure to stir the beans occasionally. The longer you cook it, the thicker it will get.

  6. Stir before serving.

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