Baked Beans

[Chelsea (Thermie Groupie)]

LOL - I cook them for a bit longer (and sometimes add some brown sugar and an extra can of beans).

[Snoozie]

I added water to it tonight and regained the sauce like state and the kids wolfed it.  Yay!

I think next time I make it I will definitely pay more attention (and not do it at 10pm!) LOL  See what happens!

[meganjane]

Ooh sorry, I haven't been following this thread. I think if you soak the beans for the proper length of time, you won't need to cook them as long or you could use a lower temps. I would put blades on reverse, yes. I didn't and some beans were a bit broken up.

I prefer not to cook the beans first as then they don't soak up the luscious flavours of the sauce. You can certainly use molasses in place of the golden syrup and can add brown sugar. I find the tomatoes are quite sweet, so don't use any more sugar.

These would also be fantastic with a ham hock, but then I wouldn't use the TMX, but a slow cooker.

I use ordinary tomato sauce (italian Passata, Dolmio) jars for canning the beans. The ones that have got a dent in the lid that pops up when you open the jar.

[Snoozie]

hehe I am just concerned "canning" things with meat in them in case I poison people.  The batch I made only made enough to put in one 850ml jar anyway and it's pretty much gone.  I think I need to research the whole canning process some more!

The beans tasted awesome by the way... like store bought but better!

[brazen20au]

how do you store them after canning MJ?

[meganjane]

Whoops! Just changed the photo, wrong one!

I store them in my pantry. If you're concerned, put them in the fridge. I've had mine for a month or so now and opened one recently. It was fine. If the dent in the lid is up, throw them away, but if the dent is down, the jar has been sealed and no contamination can take place.

[Snoozie]

I've mainly got the fowler jars with those clips so no pop up thingies ... will definitely have to do some more reading up on things but I imagine I'd be able to store because stores keep stuff for yonks and probably in worse situations than I'll be likely to put my jars lmao

Sorry also meant to ask if this is the max you can do in the tmx at a time?  Thinking if you were doing up a lot at a  time it would be very time consuming!

[meganjane]

Snoozie, if you have the Fowlers jars, you can use those. You just need to follow the directions for the Vacola. If you don't have instructions, I can get them from my sister. She makes loads of Vacola fruit and will have an instruction book.

The quantity I made was enough for three jars. I can't remember how full the TMX was, so will have to make them again to check! I'm down to my last jar, so really do need to make some more.

[Thermomixer]

Snoozie, you can certainly preserve meats for the Fowler's Jars - but need to be sure not to overcook the mix and think that you need to heat the mix twice - needs to cool to allow any botulism spores to start growing before the second heating kills the buggers.  Will check at home - don't have the book from vacola but another similar.  Used to have heaps of jars and my father sold them at a garage sale when he was moving house.

[Chelsea (Thermie Groupie)]

I made these baked beans this morning and we ate them with bacon, eggs and ezekiel bread for an easy dinner tonight.  I have never tried home-made baked beans before and am amazed at how tasty they are.  I started out cooking them at 90^o for 1 hour but the liquid wasn't evaporating at all and nothing much seemed to be happening so I increased the temp to 100^o for 40 minutes.  After that time the sauce still needed to thicken a little (and we were running later for playgroup) so I cooked them on the varoma temp for 10 minutes to finish them off.  After that time they were cooked perfectly.  I will definitely be making them again, thanks MJ.

[meganjane]

So glad that you liked them! You could easily cook them at Varoma, but I modified the recipe from a crockpot one, so I chose to use the slow, low heat cooking method.

[Thermomixer]

What sort of beans did you use Chelsea?   I know Snoozie's were overcooked, so not sure if we all have the same beans.

[Chelsea (Thermie Groupie)]

Whoops I meant to write that in my review. I used dried navy beans that I had soaked overnight (about 10 hours of soaking).  They weren't quite as soft as commercial varieties, but there were certainly no complaints.  They didn't break up at all either so they looked just like bought ones. 

[CarolineW]

Should be OK on forwards with the butterfly - that was all they had in the TM21 - no reverse. 

Very true, Thermomixer - but it has to be said that it wasn't a perfect solution.  One of the reasons I much prefer the TM31 to my old TM21 is  because of the reverse blade feature.  It's so much more effective at NOT breaking things up than the butterfly method was. 

So for those of us with TM31's, I'd always recommend to use the reverse blade for anything fragile.

[Chelsea (Thermie Groupie)]

I made these again yesterday, but tried using the method from the baked beans recipe in the A Taste of Vegetarian Cookbook.  It doesn't use the butterfly and adds the tomato in later (the acidity in tomatoes can apparently inhibit the beans softening process).  After being soaked overnight and cooked for the suggested period in the cookbook my beans were still really hard though.  I had to add another hour to the cooking time and add 150g of water every 10 minutes to prevent them burning dry.  It wasn't good!

Next time I am going to return to using your method MJ, but perhaps cook the beans in water for 45 minutes before starting the recipe.  To be the best baked beans ever the beans just need to be a teeny bit softer - the flavour is already there!