Smoky Barbecue Baked Beans

1. Heat the oil in a wide heavy pan or a cast iron skillet over medium heat. Wide matters more than deep here, because the sauce reduces from the surface.
2. Cook the onion with a pinch of salt for 8 minutes, until soft and turning gold at the edges. This is the only slow part and it is the part that pays.
3. Add the bacon, if you are using it, and cook for 3 minutes until the fat has rendered.
4. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute, no longer.
5. Stir in the tomato paste and let it fry for a minute, until it darkens and smells sweet rather than raw.
6. Pour in the barbecue sauce, the mustard and the stock, and bring it to a simmer.
7. Tip in the drained beans and stir gently, once. Beat them about and half of them break up.
8. Simmer uncovered for 30 to 40 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes and scraping the base. The sauce should coat a spoon and hold a line when you drag a spatula through it.
9. Taste. Add the sweet chilli jam if it wants roundness, the chipotle sauce if it wants smoke, and a teaspoon of vinegar if it tastes flat, which is the usual fix.
10. Grind over black pepper, take the pan off the heat and leave it for 10 minutes before serving. The sauce tightens as it cools and the beans keep drinking it in.

Better on day two, and how to hold it

Cooled and left overnight, the beans go on absorbing the sauce, and the smoke and sweetness settle into something rounder than they are an hour after cooking. Keeping and reheating are covered in the questions below. The short version is to leave the vinegar until after reheating.

On a December table they earn their place for a reason that has nothing to do with flavour: they cook on the hob and never compete for oven space. Our Christmas side dishes guide has the rest of that problem, and which sauce goes with which meat covers the barbecue end of the sauces and mixes shelf. For a smaller bottle before committing to a jar, the TRCC Chunky Barbeque Sauce is 100ml, and if the beans are going beside pulled pork the Pig Easy American BBQ Style sauce mix handles that in a slow cooker.

Common questions

Do you need to soak beans for baked beans?

Not if you use tinned, and for this recipe you should. If you do start with dried beans, soak them overnight and then cook them in plain water until they are completely tender before any sauce goes near them. Acid and sugar, both of which a barbecue sauce is full of, firm up the pectin in the skins and stop a part cooked bean softening any further. That is why people end up simmering baked beans for three hours and still finding a chalky centre. Salt in the soaking water is fine and actually helps; sauce is not.

Can barbecue baked beans be made ahead?

They are better for it. Make them a day or two out, cool them quickly and keep them covered in the fridge for up to four days, or freeze them in portions for three months. Reheat over a low flame with a splash of water, stirring, and taste again before it goes to the table, because a reheated pan almost always wants a teaspoon of vinegar to lift it. What not to do is reheat them fast over high heat, which drives off more water and leaves sauce clinging to the pan instead of the beans.

What do you serve barbecue baked beans with?

Sausages off the barbecue and a plain green salad is the honest answer, and it is what they are for. They also go under a fried egg on toast, alongside a roast, or with a jacket potato and more grated cheese than is sensible. On a Christmas table they sit happily beside cold cuts and salads, and because they hold at a low simmer for an hour they are one of the few sides you can forget about while you deal with everything else.

Glasseye Creek Bonfire BBQ Sauce is $16.95 for a 400g bottle, about two and a half batches of these beans, from the Glasseye Creek Sauce Co. range. The rest of our condiments shelf and the festive entertaining range fill in around it. Shipping is free Australia-wide on orders over $100.