There’s nothing like baked beans at a summer cookout! As much as I love baked beans, this was actually the first time I’ve ever made them (since opening a can of beans and reheating them doesn’t count 🙂 ). About 5 years ago, maybe even longer, I found a recipe for baked beans in an issue of Everyday Food, and last week I pulled it out of a stack of saved recipes and decided it was finally time to try this out! I ended up changing it a little and thought the end result was super–good!

This is a great recipe because there’s no sugar in it–many baked bean recipes call for brown sugar, but these beans are sweetened with unsulfured molasses, which is healthier (I also added a little honey). I’m a fan of both onion and bacon, so I was happy to see that these ingredients were part of the recipe, too. I decided to use turkey bacon to keep the recipe as healthy as I could, and that worked out (and tasted) great! If you are vegetarian, these beans would also be good without bacon.

So here’s my version of the recipe! It makes about 6 servings.

HONEY-MOLASSES BAKED BEANS WITH BACON & ONION by NancyCreative, adapted from Everyday Food

• 1/2 cup unsulfured molasses (you can use light or dark; I used dark)
• 1 Tablespoon honey
• 1/2 cup ketchup
• 1/4 cup honey mustard
• 3 cans (15  ounces each) navy beans, drained and rinsed
• salt and pepper, to taste (optional; I didn’t use any salt or pepper)
• 1 large onion, halved and sliced 1/4 inch thick
• 4 slices of bacon or turkey bacon, sliced crosswise in 1/2″ wide pieces (I used Oscar Mayer® Turkey Bacon)

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a medium bowl, combine molasses, honey, ketchup, and honey mustard. Add beans and season with salt and pepper, if desired. Mix ingredients to combine.

Transfer mixture to a 2 to 3–quart covered baking dish. Scatter onion slices over beans something like this…

…then lay cut pieces of bacon on top of the onion slices in a single layer, covering onion as completely as possible, like this…

Cover casserole dish and bake for 30 minutes at 375 degrees. Then uncover the dish and bake an additional 30 to 40 minutes, until bacon is crispy (I baked mine an additional 40 minutes). The baked beans will end up looking like this…

Let the beans sit in the casserole dish for about 5 minutes, then mix everything together well before serving. After mixing the beans, onion, and bacon together, the beans will look a little lighter in color (so don’t be alarmed if they seem a little dark when they come out of the oven)…

Serve beans immediately and enjoy! Makes 6 servings.

Are you a baked beans fan, too? Do you have a favorite way of making them?