A watercolour of fat pale butter beans in a dark red glossy barbecue sauce, dusted with paprika
Generated with OpenAI gpt-image-1
Adapted from American-style barbecue beans, where the sauce is ketchup, vinegar, sugar and smoke rather than the long-cooked bean liquor of a Boston bean pot

Barbecue butter beans

An established dish converted to shelf-stable ingredients. Every substitution is documented below.

How long it keeps

About 6 months, set by Vegetable oil (sunflower or rapeseed).

Indicative, for planning a build before you buy. The answer for a pack you already own is the best before date printed on it, and that only holds if it has been stored as the label says.

Serves
4
Burners
1
Pans
1
Water
0.15 L
Active
8 min
Total
18 min

Ingredients

This is what baked beans want to be. Same shape of idea, four times the flavour, and it takes eighteen minutes from a cold pan.

Butter beans, not haricot. They are broad and creamy and they hold their own against a sauce this strong. Small beans get lost in it.

  1. Oil in the pan with the dried onion and the smoked paprika, thirty seconds, just until it smells of smoke rather than dust. Paprika scorches fast, so keep it moving and keep the heat moderate.
  2. Ketchup, vinegar, sugar and mustard in, with about 100 ml of water. Let it bubble for two minutes to lose the raw vinegar edge.
  3. Drain the beans, rinse them, and tip them in. Rinsing matters here: the canning liquid is starchy and salty and it will dull the sauce.
  4. Simmer gently for ten minutes, stirring now and then, until the sauce has tightened around the beans and gone glossy and dark.

The sauce should just cling. If it is still loose, keep going with the lid off; if it tightens too far, a splash of water.

Excellent on its own, better under a fried egg, and very good indeed alongside the corned beef hash elsewhere on this site.

What this was adapted from

American-style barbecue beans, where the sauce is ketchup, vinegar, sugar and smoke rather than the long-cooked bean liquor of a Boston bean pot

  • dried beans baked for hours → tinned butter beans simmered for ten minutes

    The tin has already done the long cook. Butter beans rather than haricot because they are broader and creamier and stand up to a strong sauce without disappearing into it.

  • bacon or salt pork for smoke → smoked paprika

    The smoke is the point and the pork is only one way to get it. Smoked paprika is the honest cupboard route and it is a spice you will use elsewhere, where a piece of salt pork is a single-purpose thing that needs keeping.