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These sweet and salty, slightly smoky baked beans are everything.  Skip the expensive store bought cans and make your own for a fraction of the price!  These are wonderful to quickly dump out in a crockpot, heat up, and take to a summer cookout.  You can also bake them to perfection and they turn out wonderfully every single time!  The blend of a little molasses, brown sugar, coconut sugar, and maple syrup in these baked beans gives a really interesting and unexpected flavor profile, bringing sweetness and a little smoke for a great recipe.  Any where I take these baked beans they are always a hit.  Home canning really pays off in flavor and with money savings.  If you’ve been around for any length of time, I’m sure you noticed I’m a fan of a good bean canning recipe.

What is the Guideline for Soaking and Preparing Beans for Canning?

According to the National Center for Home Food Preservation (NCHFP), dry beans should be fully rehydrated and heated prior to canning.  I’m going to tell you right now that I wholeheartedly disagree with this and their method lends to mushy beans.  The only reason I can find that they recommend this is to get beans that do not soak up all the liquid and will easily dump from the jars like the store-bought beans, instead of my canned beans that soak up the liquid and get kinda thick in the jar.  So, yeah, it looks prettier on the shelf  BUT, that defeats the purpose of baked beans and it’s really not hard to get the beans out of the jar with a spoon.  

To get the most flavorful and thick sauce, you WANT the beans to soak up the liquid.  And you also don’t want sad, mushy, overcooked beans because you are subsequently going to bake or heat these up.  Most of the time, these guidelines from the NCHFP are set forth to make the prettiest and most appealing product, not because you are going to unalive from botulism if you stray from it.  You are going to can pints of dried beans for 75 minutes under pressure.  

They are absolutely going to get to temp, cook through, and be shelf stable.  I’ve been canning beans like this my whole life.  I used to not even soak them until we started farting ourselves to outer space when we ate them :D  That being said, if you would prefer to follow the NCHFP guidelines and not dabble in a bit of rebel canning, that is absolutely fine!  Go ahead and follow their advice, but instead of adding water, add my baked bean sauce, and can them the same. No harm, no foul! 

Equipment You Will Need:

• Pressure canner
• Pint canning jars
• Canning lids and rings
• cast iron frying pan
• large pot
• jar funnel
• jar lifter

Ingredients:

• dried great northern beans or any white beans
• onions
• bacon
• water
• molasses
• brown sugar
• coconut sugar
• apple cider vinegar
• maple syrup
• garlic powder

Let’s get to canning!

Step 1: Soak the Beans

Rinse and sort two pounds of dry beans.  I recommend great northern beans for this recipe, but a mixture of beans works great too.  A blend of baby limas, dry navy beans, and great northern made a pretty nice concoction one year when I had beans in storage to use up.  You can honestly use any bean you like here… I just wouldn’t use something like black beans as they would turn the sauce a strange color.

Add the beans to a large bowl and cover with cool water by 1-2 inches.  Add a lid to cover the bowl and allow the beans to soak for 12-18 hours.  When soaking, I prefer to add a splash of vinegar as I have found in conjunction to soaking, adding an acid has made them much more digestible for us, and we LOVE beans here!

I do not do the quick soak method that is given by the NCHFP.  I don’t like it, I always cook the beans over because I get distracted, and I don’t want to precook the beans.  See above for more information on that.

Step 2:  Fill the Jars

Drain the soaked beans and rinse them very well.  Portion the drained beans into 10 pint jars, using about 1 heaping cup of beans for each, making sure to evenly distribute them.  

Fry 6 strips of bacon until crispy, drain, and chop up.  Finely chop up 2 sweet onions.  Portion both the bacon and the onions equally in all jars.  

If you desire to can quarts of baked beans instead of pints, use 4-5 quart jars and portion equally.  I aim to have the jars around 2/3 full-ish.

Step 3: Make the Molasses Sauce

To a stock pot, add the remaining ingredients:

• 2 quarts of water
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 1/2 cup coconut sugar
• 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 2 teaspoons garlic powder
• 1 pint ketchup ( I use my home canned)
• 2 teaspoons of salt
• 2 teaspoons of black pepper
• 2 tablespoons of dry mustard
• 1 teaspoon of liquid smoke
• 1 teaspoon worcestershire sauce

Whisk to dissolve the sugar over medium heat.  Once sugar is dissolved, increase to medium-high heat and bring to a boil.  Reduce to a simmer and cook 10 minutes, covered.

Step 4:  Ladle the Sauce into Jars

Using a jar funnel, ladle the hot sauce into each jar, filling to one inch headspace.

De-bubble jars and add more sauce if needed to maintain headspace.

Step 5:  Canning

Wipe rims of the jar with a vinegar damp cloth and be sure they are clean and no debris are present.  This can affect the success of your seals.

Add new, clean lids and bands and secure according to manufacturer’s instruction.

Since these beans are low acid foods and there’s probably not enough vinegar in the sauce to make it acidic enough to water bath, as well as the beans needing to be fully cooked, I recommend you stick with pressure canning them.

Fill your pressure canner with the recommended amount of water and add your jars.  I add hot water from the tap.

Pressure can at your elevations weight for 75 minutes for pints or 90 minutes for quarts.  Elevations 1000ft and under are 10 pounds and higher elevations are 15 pounds for weighted and weighted gauge canners.  If you are utilizing a dial gauge pressure canner, you have the opportunity to more fine tune your pressure at a more defined range; see the charts in your canning books on this!

Step 6:  Storing

Once the processing time is complete, shut off the heat and allow the canner to completely depressurize.  Once depressurized, remove jars from canner to a heat proof spot covered with a clean towel.  Allow jars to set aside undisturbed to cool and seal for 12-18 hours.  Any jars that did not seal after this time may be reprocessed, frozen, or placed in the fridge and eaten.  The pressure canning process makes these baked beans shelf stable as long as they are properly sealed and canned appropriately.

After jars are cooled, remove bands and test seals.  Wash jars in hot soapy water, dry, and label.  Store in a cool, dark place away from direct sunlight.  Shelf life is 18 months-2 years for best nutritional value, but they will last much longer than that if need be.  Try to rotate your stock out to get maximum nutritional benefit but don’t start throwing food out if the seal is good and they’re at the 2 year mark.  THEY ARE FINE.

Notes:

• If you enjoy some spice in your baked beans, the addition of cayenne pepper after opening is really good.  I prefer to add it after as it seems the spice level is lost when canning.
• For an extra hillbilly meal, add a jar or two of baked beans and add sliced hotdogs or smoked sausage to a baking dish.  Bake at 350F for about 20 minutes, or ’til heated through and the edges are bubbling.
• For a large batch, feel free to double, triple, quadruple or more this recipe and fill up your big pressure canner.  If you have a 23 quart pressure canner, they normally hold 18 pints.  I also have a nesco electric pressure canner, so I will occasionally make a triple batch, fill my nesco with 4 quarts, and fill my big AA pressure canner with 18 pints, and toss any extra into a crockpot to cook on low all day, OR if it’s later in the day, pressure cook them in my Instant Pot for 75 minutes.  It works out great!  

Enjoy!

Better Than Bush’s Homemade Pressure Canned Baked Beans

4.50 from 2 votes

Print Pin Rate

Servings: 10 pints

Author: Ruby – Red Feather Farm

Equipment

• Pressure Canner
• pint jars
• canning lids and bands
• Cast Iron Frying Pan
• stock pot
• jar funnel
• jar lifter

Ingredients

• 2 pounds dried great northern beans
• 2 onions finely chopped
• 6 strips of bacon cooked crisp & chopped
• 8 cups water
• 1/2 cup molasses
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 1/2 cup coconut sugar
• 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 cup maple syrup
• 2 tsps garlic powder
• 1 pint ketchup
• 2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp black pepper
• 2 tbsp dry mustard
• 1 tsp liquid smoke
• 1 tsp worcestershire sauce

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Instructions

• Rinse and soak beans 12 hours in acidified water. I prefer adding a splash of vinegar to my soaking water. This is optional, see notes.
• After soaking, drain and rinse beans well. Add a heaping 1 cup to each pint jar. Evenly distribute bacon and onion between jars.
• Add remaining ingredients to a stock pot, bring to a boil, whisking to dissolve sugar. Stir frequently to prevent burning. Allow to simmer for 10 minutes and at this point taste and see if the seasoning is to your liking. Adjust as needed.
• Ladle liquid over jars with beans to 1" headspace, de-bubble and add more liquid if needed to maintain headspace. Wipe rims with vinegar soaked cloth, add lids and bands.
• Pressure can at your elevations recommended pressure for 75 minutes pints or 90 minutes quarts.

Notes

I prefer to soak my beans with an acid for this recipe as I take it to a lot of things as a side dish. This ensures the best digestible beans. I’m not trying to give everyone the farts :D You can skip the soaking process and simply add 1/2 cup unsoaked great northern beans if you’d like something faster.

If you would prefer quart jar sizes, just add double the beans, bacon, and onions to the jars and distribute between 4-5 quarts.

If you enjoy some spice to your baked beans, the addition of cayenne pepper after opening this is really good.  I prefer to add it after as it seems the spice level is lost when canning.