white beans

I look back at all those regular beans that I've eaten and silently ask the cooks collectively, "What were you thinking?" 

I sense they were all not thinking. Or they were thinking what's the least they can do with that #10 can of beans. I doubt they ever even looked for beans in a cookbook or else they'd know what's going on. You can make them taste like anything. You can include the regular enhancements. Tins of beans usually come with one sorry little piece of floppy bacon, you can pump up the jam by using a lot of fantastic and carefully prepared bacon. You can fry the bacon first in the same pot to render its fat throughout. You can add alcohol for its flavor, beer wine, anything, I used sake. But most importantly you can add something sour like vinegar and something sweet like honey. A recipe for Boston baked beans gives the idea and you can extrapolate from that how to poke out the profile. 

Hold off on tomatoes and brown sugar until the end if you use them. Also vinegar. Anything acid will change the pH and toughen the skins so they never turn soft without overnight baking, as Boston beans are. A recipe will call for molasses or brown sugar, salt pork, vinegar and tomato, and each of those elements can be improved greatly and treated more wisely than baking overnight. People think that it's salt that toughens up beans. No, it is acid. So don't put those elements in until the beans are already softened. 

Baked beans are a favorite side at Buckhorn Exchange. They've been asked so often for the recipe they went ahead and just published it on their lunch menu available online.

Here is the Buckhorn Exchange recipe for bean soup. 

1 LB Great Northern beans

1/2 cup diced onion

3 oz diced ham

1 oz chicken base

1/2 tsp seasoned salt

1 tsp Liquid Smoke

1 tsp granulated garlic

1 tsp white pepper

1/2 gallon water

1 oz cornstarch

1/2 cup water

Bake slowly at low 200℉ (that's not boiling temperature, not even in Denver) for 8 hours. When beans are tender remove from oven to stovetop and bring to a boil, mix cornstarch and 1/2 cup water to thicken. Let simmer 15 minutes.

That's just crazy. Who's got that kind of time. You can do this whole thing from hard dried beans in 20 minutes by pressure cooker. They didn't say anything about soaking the beans. I suppose that's part of the 8 hours low heat baking. 

They thicken with cornstarch instead of smashing a few beans to do the same thing. While soup doesn't have to be thick. 

And this is the part that just kills me. Buckhorn Exchange is all about various somewhat bizarre meats. They cook pheasant every night. Duck too. If Buckhorn Exchange doesn't have bones for broth then nobody does. And they use a commercial ersatz liquid smoke when smoke is literally pouring out of their building every night filling the entire neighborhood with the smell of roasting meat. 

Come on!

See, their beans really are utterly delicious. And yet, they can be even better.

They use dehydrated garlic that restaurants rely on instead of fresh garlic. There is no acid component, no tomato, and there is nothing sweet, no molasses, no brown sugar, no honey. 

I wish I had made crackers. I'm showing an egg but I also added tomatoes. I still have some beans left and I'll add cheese to that.