How the heck long have I been doing this anyway? It doesn’t matter; the mad-kitchen scientist is back for another season of recipes to make your Buffalo Bills game days even more memorable.
For those of you new to this, it’s pretty simple. We love the Bills. We love food. Every week, you’ll get a themed recipe based on the Bills and their opponent.
Buffalo Baked Beans
It’s time for the first Patriots recipe this year but I have some big news. Typically, this is “cheater” week, where I take some sort of recipe shortcut
to achieve victory. I felt that the joke was getting a bit old though, and I decided maybe not this year.
Just kidding! I mean, thanks to Mike Vrabel, the Patriots are seemingly more committed to cheating than ever. This week I copy my own recipe from years ago and the entire premise of this is that one step of the process is such a pain in the neck usually that I only did a redo thanks to figuring out a shortcut! Cheating all over the place!
Credit to fellow Rumbler bdluvs for the suggestion to revisit!
Buffalo Baked Beans
Serves: About 8
Active time: 30 min
Total time: 3 hours
Ingredients
1 lb dry navy beans
3 cups apple cider (divided, see below)
3 cups water
2 Tbsp unsalted butter (divided, see below)
1/4 large onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tbsp black pepper
1/2 cup molasses
1/4 hot honey
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp prepared mustard
4 Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
3 Tbsp distilled white vinegar
1/2 lb bacon
1/4 cup brown sugar
You will need: Pressure cooker, measuring equipment (cups, spoons and the like), large pot, 9”x13” baking pan (preferably glass)
- Thoroughly rinse navy beans and remove any dirt debris (carefully look for little stones and grit).
- Place beans, 2 cups of cider, 3 cups of water, and 1 Tbsp of butter in the pressure cooker; pressure cook on HIGH 40 min. (Allow pressure cooker to naturally release while continuing with step 3.)
- Melt remaining 1 Tbsp of butter on MED heat in the large pot; stir onions, garlic, and black pepper into the butter. Saute until onions start to become translucent
- Carefully pour beans from pressure cooker and remaining liquid into large pot with onions and garlic.
- Stir in the remaining 1 cup of cider, molasses, honey, salt, mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and vinegar.
- Simmer until sauce is thickened, stirring frequently (see tip below).
- Preheat oven to 350ºF; Carefully pour mixture into baking pan.
- Place bacon in a single layer on top of beans; bake until bacon is thoroughly cooked, about 45 min. Bacon can be flipped every 10-15 min. In the final 10 min sprinkle with brown sugar.
- Remove from oven and let rest for about 10 min before serving.
Wingin’ It tips
Realistically, there’s not that much to give you tips on for this recipe. No baked bean step is all that complicated, it’s just tedious. If you do this without a pressure cooker, oh man does it suck. There’s an overnight soak, which sucks. Then there’s a multiple-hour boiling step, which takes so long you might need to add more water as you go along. With the pressure cooker it’s perfect in an hour.
When you’re simmering the beans in the pot, how do you know when the sauce is thick enough? Test it by dipping a spoon in, letting it cool on the spoon for 10-15 seconds, and then hold the spoon vertical over the pot to see how the liquid flows in. Get it close to where you want it and call it done.
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