How to get me to eat baked beans

I have a secret — I don’t like baked beans, especially the ones straight from the can. I never have. My tolerance for them has gotten better, though. When I was little, I would start gagging when I put baked beans in my mouth. Now I can swallow them and fake a smile, but I don’t usually take a second helping. Actually, I don’t usually choose to take a first helping if I can help it.

It took almost thirty years, but I have figured out a way for me to not only eat baked beans, but to enjoy them. The first step in this process is to figure out what I don’t like about them when they came straight out of the can. The main thing? The sweetness of them. I don’t care for sweat barbeque anyway, and the tons of sugar that they put in the beans before they can them turns my stomach. When we figured that out, doctoring beans up for me was actually pretty easy. Here is my recipe:

Mike’s Doctored Baked Beans

1 can of baked beans
1-2 slices of bacon
1-3 cloves of chopped garlic
1/4 to 1/2 cup of chopped onions
2 T- 1/4 cup of barbeque sauce

Open the can of beans and drain the liquid out. You don’t need to dirty a strainer — I usually hold the lid while turning the can over the sink

Chop bacon slices and cook them until crispy. Add onion and garlic and cook until softened.

Drain grease from bacon mixture and add to beans. Add the barbeque sauce and stir well. Heat until liquid starts to bubble.

That’s it — that’s all there is to it.

In the summer, we pretty much do all our cooking on the grill and I do the beans on there. I have a small cast iron skillet that I cook the bacon in. It’s usually hot enough that I take it off the grill entirely when I put the onions and garlic in. Then I cook the beans in a small Pyrex dish that I’ve had forever.

Now that we figured out a way to get me to eat baked beans, a committee has been formed to figure out how to get me to eat cantalope. I wish them well — that still invokes a gagging reflex in me.