Quick Vegetarian Maple Beer Baked Beans
I don’t particularly care for baked beans out of a can. There are too many ingredients, most of them sugars, and they’re super syrupy and wet. Baking beans from scratch, on the other hand, is an all day affair. They are undoubtedly the best, but a day’s worth of dedication for beans is too much for me to give on a regular basis. So, we don’t eat many baked beans. To satisfy a baked-bean craving, I experimented and was extremely pleased with the results.
Ingredients:
- 2 cans Kidney Beans
- 1 can Beer, I used Lefthand Brewery ESB, an ale from a local brewery in Longmont, CO
- Maple Syrup (the real stuff. Nothing fake, please. If it’s not from Vermont or Canada, toss it out and buy the real stuff)
Mix the maple syrup with the beer until it dissolves. I used around 1/2 cup syrup because the ESB (Extra Special Bitter) had a bite to it that needed to be balanced with sweetness. Rinse the beans well to get off all the canned goo, mix into the maple beer, pour into a pyrex baking dish, cover, and bake for close to 2 hours at 400 degrees.
In that 2 hours, mix the beans 2 or 3 times. Uncover the beans after the first hour to let some of the liquid cook-off. They’ll be done when all of the liquid is absorbed and they are just glazed with a maple beer coating. Salt and pepper to taste.
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