Pit Beans – from Scratch.. and a Pork Chop

A staple side for BBQ plate – baked beans, pit beans, cowboy beans, bbq beans – however you want to categorize it… it’s a perfect side. It’s hard not to just pick up a can of Bush’s for a dollar or two and add heat and call it a side. But I wanted to put a little flair on it. I found what may be a pretty good starter recipe at Meatwave and look forward to expanding on it. I already know when I do it next time, letting your drippings from your cook add that flavor is what I’m going to go with. But until then, just beans.

And a pork chop. I couldn’t JUST do beans. I was going to do a simple bone-in chop to make the plate a little better. And my stomach a little happier. You’ll see the final result isn’t the soupy ‘baked beans’ out of the can – I let mine go a little bit too long. Wasn’t a bad decision, by any means – just to each their own. Let’s go!

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Recipe

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The Prep Table

Here’s a sneak peek into the MrsForensicBBQ pantry. This is where beans go to live a happy bean life with other bean friends:

So I had a hell of a choice of beans to choose from. I went with the Northern, Navy and Pintos. Let these soak overnight – or two nights (I forgot why I did what I did, but I didn’t get around to making the beans that day).

Doesn’t look like much of a soak anymore, them beans drank up that water like the drunkey beans they were. With these ready to go, I had to hurry up and get smoking up that bacon. I went with a nice center-cut for this one. Put a slight sprinkle of that sweet and spicy Fine Swine and let it go for a couple hours.

Beans post-soak, bacon on the smoker – time to cut up some vegetables. Diced up the yellow onion, green pepper, jalapeno, garlic – and of course habanero because I don’t know any better. Dice/mince these up as much as you want – think of the end result on how you want them beans to be accompanied.

I ran out of my ForensicBBQ sauce, so I had to make a quick one. This was truly just a mixture of good. Mustard (eh), Honey, Molasses, BBQ seasoning, brown sugar, ketchup, hot sauce, and that ACV.

This had quite a bit of prep to it – A lot going on when you can just buy that Bush’s for $1. Nah, let’s add some love. Beans prepped overnight, veggies sliced, BBQ sauce ready to be made – Let’s get to the process.

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The Process

The first step is easy, smoke some bacon. I but half a pound on here and cooked it to a firm, not crisp bacon. 275 degrees for just over and hour and it’ll get you to where you want to be. That little bit of seasoning goes a long way too. Sometimes I do no seasoning – went for it a little bit on this day.

When this was all cooked up, I went inside and started on the veg. Let that bacon cool down a little bit – you’ll be adding it here shortly. The recipe I found suggested the dutch-oven cook of the bacon and keeping that grease in there. An absolutely recommended idea – but I really wanted smoked bacon in it – so I sacrificed. Put that sauté on the garlic/onion and then added the veggies.

Softened up those veggies for a few minutes and added the rest of the fun: The chicken stock, bacon, water and of course- beans. Here’s where I got side-tracked also. Wanted to bring it to a boil and simmer for an hour. I let it boil for WAY too long, and we lost some liquid. We lost a lot of liquid. Next time, I’ll pay attention – but I can admit my faults (right MrsForensicBBQ?)

Mixed up that quick sauce – wasn’t overly impressive, but it was BBQ sauce. Wasn’t too sweet, too spicy – it was just OK. Next time, I can’t wait to use my sauce.

The two pictures that follow show the post reduction (and the obvious loss of liquid) and post-sauce. You can see how quickly it went from looking like a bean soup to pit beans. Covered these up and put them on the smoker at 300 for a few hours.

I could’ve just made this a pit bean post, but I thought why not get a bone-in chop to have some fun too. I was going to be waiting for a little bit, might as well get some meat on that plate.

All I did was throw some of that Fine Swine on there and put it on the grates. Kept the same temp, just let it roll. No, wasn’t getting too much smoke at 300 degrees, but I just needed something to accompany the beans.

You can see above how much liquid was lost. I’d like to keep more in there for next time, but for the first time through – and knowing where my mistake was – I was hoping the taste was good.

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The Result

Pork Chop ALMOST stole the show. This thing was juicy and really worked well with the beans (I know, what a concept).

Scooped out a pile of beans, put it next to the chop and took a quick fork to the beans to try it. They were GOOD, but not great. The pork chop was phenomenal, actually – but the beans need a little more love. The flavor of the fresh beans were so much better than out of the can. The BBQ sauce was mediocre, probably because I’m used to my blend by now. And I know I’ve mentioned this a number of times – we cooked too much liquid out of here.

Another good one to follow-up on later. I really want to master the pit bean – so I’m sure the next round will be better. I made so many of these things – I ate them for days (MrsForensicBBQ was not impressed by the results of the bean diet).

Hope you took a few things out of this one – not only do I help you on what to do, but obviously not what to do also (ha!) Thanks for checking this one out – it was quite the process and one that will be fun to build on!

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I’m probably going to throw this on a couple of posts so there’s more awareness. And if you haven’t checked out the site on your PC/Mac, that’s where the gold is! (or at least where I spent most of my time)

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Recipe