Baked beans, the ones usually served alongside our backyard grilled hamburgers and hot dogs, are typically a hit-and-miss experience. At their best, the beans are tender and deeply flavorful, with a discernible smokiness and a hint of brown sugar. At their worst, they're mushy and so overwhelmingly sweet that no other flavors are allowed to shine.
In my experience, baked beans often fall into the latter category, usually because they start with canned beans, which typically are already quite soft and contain an impressive amount of sugar. Then they're often augmented with more sugar, along with ketchup and/or barbecue sauce and baked until the beans have given up all their texture and become almost indistinguishable from the sauce.
When you start with dried beans, though, and add ingredients that bring more to the party than a harsh hit of fructose, the dish can be a delicious revelation, with beans that maintain their shape and have a toothsome bite and just the right amount of sweetness and spice.
Most of us associate baked beans with New England, but the Southwest has its own history with the dish in the form of cowboy beans.
Like the classic New England variety, there are a million versions of cowboy baked beans. Some are more like a main dish, studded with barbecued or ground meat. Others include fresh or dried chiles. More often than not, a splash of barbecue sauce is stirred in, along with a surprising ingredient — coffee.
Coffee brings a slightly bitter note that offsets the sweetness and offers a necessary depth of flavor.
In this week's recipe, Slow-Baked Cowboy Beans, I also include a hit of smokiness in the form of bacon, chipotle chiles and smoked paprika, which, for me, ties the dish back to its campfire origin and brings yet one more layer of complexity.
All of these ingredients are brought together in a Dutch oven and baked slowly, giving everything the time and heat necessary to transform into one memorably delicious side dish for any summertime occasion.
