Beans and Biscuits

One success and one that I need to try again.

I'm working my way through Alton Brown's first cookbook. Tonight I decided to try 2 recipes from the book - Boston Baked Beans and Southern Biscuits.

Did I say that I tried these tonight? Actually the beans have been baking since noon. From scratch baked beans are a commitment, not just a recipe. They went in the oven at noon and here at 7pm I'm still trying to get them done. Not all of this is bad as I like to choose an all day oven food on a cold day like this one and these beans seem to be in that category along with roasting a turkey or a slow-cooked roast. We won't be choosing this recipe in July.

I know I made 2 mistakes. First, I skipped a step in the initial preparation. I did sweat the bacon and onions and then added the remaining ingredients including the dry bean. At this point, the mixture was to be brought to a boil on top of the stove; a step I missed. And before that I used hard water from my now working tap when I should have used soft for the beans. I may never get these done.

On a happy note, the flavor was excellent. Contributing to the flavor was several wonderful ingredients. Using Applewood Smoked bacon, Hormel of course, gave excellent flavor and so was a good choice. The recipe called for other typical ingredients like onions, tomato paste, and molasses. An unusual ingredient was 2 chopped jalapeno peppers. Did New Enlganders historically use those in their baked beans? I think not. But I did, only compromising by using 1 instead of 2. These beans are very good even if they are hard - this time anyway. On another cold day we'll try these again.


The biscuits were excellent. Several notes here:

This is one of the first times I used a scale to weigh some of the ingredients rather than use a volume measure. The results were excellent as the dough was just right, not too dry and not too sticky.

I used butter and butter-flavor shortening. The flavor was excellent.

The recipe calls for buttermilk rather than plain milk. Again, this contributed to excellent flavor and a very tender, light biscuit.

The recipe was supposed to make 12 using a 3-inch biscuit cutter. I got 7 and a little scrap. Not sure what happened here. Maybe I could have or should have cut them a bit thinner but they baked well at this thickness.

Finally, a meal of biscuits and beans on this cold, snowy night. My dining partner thought we needed a big piece of something meat-like to go with the meal but has not complained about the missing something either during or after.