August is my birthday month, but I’ve posted so many cake recipes… so I decided to go with how we frequently celebrated my birthday, a barbecue. I love a good barbecue. My husband does the whole smoked meat thing now. Back in the day it was just a grill and some burgers. Maybe if we were really lucky, pork steaks. I adore pork steaks.

In case you aren’t from Missouri or a surrounding area, pork steaks are steaks cut from a pork shoulder/butt. Thin, but not stupid thin. In Wisconsin, I’ve only found one butcher who had clue one what I was talking about when I asked for pork steaks, so I mainly buy the butt/shoulder and cut them myself. Bone in or boneless, both are delicious.

Okay, so pork steaks…if you’ve never had them, you HAVE to try them,  but this post was supposed to be about my favorite barbecue side: baked beans.

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This recipe, by the way, is a true testament to how Southern Missourians can take a fairly healthy dish (beans) and completely destroy any health benefits it might have had, but in a very tasty manner.

Baked Beans

6 – 10 slices of bacon
1 diced onion (or less to fit your preference)
3/4 cup ketchup
1/2 to 3/4 cup molasses
3 tablespoons mustard (plain old yellow is fine)
3 cans pork and beans

Fry off your bacon, let cool and drain on some paper towels, then crumble it up. Reserve the bacon grease.

Combine bacon, onion, ketchup, molasses, mustard and pork and beans in a casserole dish. Mix it up and depending on how decadent you want to go and your taste, add some of the bacon grease. Mix again.

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What all the baked beans I ate as a child were baked in! (from Amazon)

Use a spoon to taste some of the juice. Here’s where you can add more mustard if it’s too sweet or more ketchup/molasses if it’s not sweet enough. More bacon grease if you like too.

 

(You can also leave the bacon only half cooked and add it that way. Then it will produce its own fat.)

Bake uncovered at 325 for around two hours.You want them to thicken. Also, note they will bubble and if you have them in too small of a casserole dish, they will bubble over. I recommend oversizing the dish some and placing a pan on the rack beneath them just in case.

Also… I play with this a lot. I like the molasses, but you could substitute some of it with brown sugar. I don’t know why you would… but you could.