Baked Beans recipe for bottling or preserving in some way?

[burek]

Hi
Thought I'd make a big big batch of baked beans with a big part of our beans from the garden. I don't have a freezer big enough to freeze baked beans. But I do have a lot of glass jars still, despite all the chutney and jam we've been making! Does anyone know of a recipe I can use to preserve baked beans in jars? Or is there anything I could add to the basic recipe in order to help them keep once sealed? They would preferrably need to keep through the winter at least, if not longer.

Thanks!

[contadina]

Sadly jarring beans is too dodgy/dangerous so you'd be better off drying them and using them to make baked beans when you intend to eat them. As I've not had any for ages I'm going to soak some now so that we can scoff them at the weekend.

[Annpan]

Do you have a good recipe for baked beans? How do you do yours?

Burek, can you make a chutney with your beans? that way you can keep them in jars. I'd guess that you have to add alot of sugar to them to keep them so baked beans wouldn't really work. On the other hand contadina says it is too risky, is that with all methods of preserving beans? (other than in cans - I assume)

[ina]

On the other hand contadina says it is too risky, is that with all methods of preserving beans? (other than in cans - I assume)

I remember when my mum used to bottle green beans, they had to be boiled for ages to keep, and they were still risky. So beans I never bottle anymore, in these times of a freezer...

I make a kind of baked beans by just cooking haricot beans and then stewing them in a tomato sauce, made with chopped onions and tinned tomatoes (I'm lucky if I get enough fresh ones to eat raw).

[Shirley]

I'd dry them instead and then you can make baked beans as and when the need arises

[Trinity]

Hiya,

I'm just drying mine and keeping them for use when need be.
Agreed

Trinity
x

[possum]

Sadly jarring beans is too dodgy/dangerous so you'd be better off drying them and using them to make baked beans when you intend to eat them. .

That is not the case, else you would have thousands of cases of botulism every year from all the canned baked beans eaten every year. The problem is incorrectly doing it.

I haven't canned anything like this, but I did read up on the subject before we moved here and have several books about various preserving methods.

If you are going to do it, you need to know how to do it correctly and do not just guess the recipe or cooking time. Pressure canning is the way to do it so that the temperature is higher than 100C, this is necessary to kill any bacteria.

I did an online course from this site http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/ the links doesn't seem to be working at the moment, but try again later. It is free, but very good.

[contadina]

You are correct possum, you can jar baked beans safely using a pressure cooker but not the water bath method, which is fine if you only want to make a few jars at a time http://www.pickyourown.org/canningbakedbeans.htm

For economic reasons I only jar stuff in very large batches (around 50 kilos of tomatoes for sauce) so only ever use very large pans for preserving.

The beauty of using dried beans is that you can experiment each time - here's a sort of recipe that I use borrowed from Cranks.

Bake-a-da-beans, as I'm sure the Italians call them - you can use any beans - just make sure they're fairly soft after first boil or you'll become quite musical (the recipe says slightly soft, but this played havoc with our collective digestive systems). Also you can add other veg such as courgette or peppers, or change the 'erbs and spices (bay. clove, cinnamon, oregano) just make sure its got a bit of sweet, sour and spice.

350g beans (black-eyed, haricot, cannelloni and borlotti are all good) soaked over night, 700g if using tinned beans
1tbsp oil
1 medium onion chopped
3 crushed garlic cloves
1tsp cumin seeds
1tsp ground coriander
1 apple, peeled, cored and grated
1 grated carrot
1 and half cans of tomatoes (or a jar of sauce)
1 tbsp sugar
2tsp cider vinegar
1 tbsp tomato puree
quarter pint water
salt and pepper

Drain and rinse beans well (essential if you want to limit farting power). Put in saucepan with double their volume of water. Bring too boil and boil steadily for 10 mins, then lower heat, cover and simmer for 30 mins or until beans soft. Drain.

Preheat oven to 200% (400%F/gas 6) heat oil in casserole dish (on hob) and add onion, garlic, cumin and coriander. Cook stirring occasionally until onion soft. Add apple and carrot for a few mins. Add everything else, cover with lid and and shove in oven for about 40 mins.