Recipes: Boston baked beans

This hearty, budget-friendly one-pot is perfect family fare

ents

• 500g pack dried haricot beans
• 2 onions , roughly chopped
• 2 celery sticks, roughly chopped
• 2 carrots , roughly chopped
• 2 tbsp Dijon mustard
• 2 tbsp light muscovado sugar
• ½ tbsp black treacle or molasses
• 2 tbsp tomato purée
• 800g piece pork belly
• handful parsley , roughly chopped

  

  1. Soak the beans in a large bowl of cold water for at least 4 hrs or overnight. Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Drain and rinse the beans and put in a large flameproof casserole with 1.5 litres water. Boil for 10 mins, skimming off any scum that appears on the surface.
  2. Add the onion, celery, carrot, Dijon mustard, sugar, treacle or molasses and tomato purée. Stir until everything is well mixed, then bury the piece of pork in among the beans. Cover tightly and cook in the oven for 2-2½ hrs until the beans and pork are very tender. Check halfway through the cooking time and top up with hot water from the kettle if necessary.
  3. Take the pork out of the pot. Cut into large chunks and serve with the beans, sprinkled with parsley.

  Beans

  Dried beans are undoubtedly much cheaper, but you need to allow significant time for soaking. Canned beans can be rinsed, added to a dish and simply heated through before serving. If you want to swap dried or canned in any recipe, you will need to cook 100g dried beans instead of using a 400g can and vice versa.

  PER SERVING

  615 kcalories, protein 43g, carbohydrate 54g, fat 27 g, saturated fat 10g, fibre 16g, sugar 14g, salt 0,8 g