Slow Cooker All-Day Baked Beans Meal
Doesn’t hamburgers and baked beans sound like summer foods? I know it’s the spring season right now, but summer days are coming. If you ask me, I think spring and fall seasons don’t last long enough. I suppose that depends on what part of the USA or world you live in. But in East and Southeast Texas where it gets humid and the California desert where my cabin is, it gets hot too quick for me before summer arrives. I’d be happy for spring or fall days all year long.
When the hottest part of summer comes around, cooking in a hot kitchen doesn’t sound like a good idea. One way to eliminate a lot of cooking in the heat of summer is to cook several pounds of ground chuck, lean beef (or whatever kind of hamburger meat you buy) and freeze what you don’t use that day. Then all you have to do is take out what you need each time you need ground beef for a recipe.
I’ve always liked Bush’s Best Baked Beans Original. Then one time I tasted a baked bean dish with ground beef. It’s a meal in itself. So imagine making that in the slow cooker and having dinner ready when you get home. You can also make a big batch of coleslaw ahead of time and serve it with the baked bean meal. Saves time. Saves cooking in a hot kitchen on a hot summer day.
Ingredients
- 2 Large Cans Bush's Best Baked Beans (or 4 regular cans of any pork and beans)
- 1/3 to 1/2 package bacon
- 1/2 to 1 cup Hickory Smoke Barbecue sauce
- Cooked Hamburger
- 1/2 large or 1 whole small sweet onion
Instructions
- Slice bacon in three sections.
- Chop onion in fine, small pieces.
- Add beans, bacon, onion, barbecue sauce, and hamburger to crockpot.
- Cook on low for 8-9 hours.
- Serve with coleslaw or salad.
Pork and Beans Sandwiches
There’s a pork and beans story I want to share with you. Like I already mentioned, I like baked beans. When my husband, our daughter, and I lived the RV lifestyle for nearly ten years, we experienced some occasional lean times. One certain memory I have is of a trip we took from Bakersfield, California to Omaha, Nebraska. We were scheduled to be in a meeting on Easter Sunday morning. It was quite a trip. We left on a Thursday afternoon and arrived at 6:00 am Easter Sunday. Funds were tight that week. Because of that, we were very careful about spending any money.
When we neared Vail, Colorado, it was night time and all semi trucks and RV’s were delayed from going up to the summit because of ice and snow. Finally, early the next morning it seemed like the line of semis making the journey up to the summit was two miles long.
We had barely reached the summit when a driver in an SUV got our attention to tell us we had a flat tire. We ended up purchasing a tire and had enough to purchase fuel for the rest of the trip.
The three of us dug for any change we could find. Our young daughter had saved a twenty-dollar bill from her Papa and gave it to us to help out. That was hard to do. We felt bad about having to use her saved-up money even though she would later get it back.
All we had in the pantry were cans of pork and beans, bread, and mayonnaise (maybe mustard, too). We feasted on pork and bean sandwiches Thursday through Saturday.
It wasn’t until many years later when our daughter remembered that incident and told us she actually always liked pork and bean sandwiches but didn’t want to tell us at the time of that incident.
Incidentally, pork and beans taste good on toasted bread with mayonnaise.
Beans served on toast was a frequent breakfast when I was a child and money was tight.