Creamy, rich, and saucy.
. And yet, somehow, Boston got singled out with the nickname"Beantown"* for its love of the local version of the dish. What are Boston baked beans? The short answer is that they're small white beans , slow-cooked in an oven, hearth, or ember-filled hole in the ground with molasses, salt pork, black pepper, and maybe a touch of mustard and onion until they form a thick stew, rich with a deep color and caramelized crust.
In the end, I decided to stick firm to tradition and find a way to get my beans soft and my sauce thick without relying on modern add-ins. That meant a baked bean recipe with nothing but beans, molasses, pork, onion, and mustard .
Back in the day, when masonry ovens retained plenty of heat throughout the night, this was a great perk: You could throw a pot of beans in the oven in the evening and open it in the morning to find something that wasn't mush. Today, though, the molasses creates a minor challenge. Either we follow in our forebears' footsteps by sticking a pot of beans in the oven overnight, or we need some kind of trick to cut the cooking time slightly.
So what about alternatives? I tried making a batch with baking soda added to the pot, which counteracts the low pH of the molasses and speeds cooking time. This led to a pot of mushy, over-browned beans that lacked the hard-earned flavor of true slow cooking that was needed to make them a success. Second, some salt pork comes with plenty of salt still clinging to it. If yours does, you'll want to wash the excess off, lest your beans end up oversalted.
While the beans are cooking, I prep the other ingredients, cutting the salt pork into large chunks, dicing the onion, and combining the molasses with the mustard, salt, and plenty of freshly ground black pepper.
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