On Saturday afternoons in fall and winter, my mother and I got in the car and drove the mile or so from our little red house on East Center Street to the farm on Whirlwind Hill. We visited with my grandparents and uncles and aunts over afternoon coffee in the kitchen, and then we headed home with our treasures. Mine was the weekly Life Magazine. My grandmother had a subscription and let me have it after she was finished. When I got home I read it cover to cover while I waited for the supper that was my mother’s treasure – a big pot of my grandmother’s baked beans.
“Bean Pot,” Carol Crump Bryner, watercolor, 2014
Saturday on the farm was baking day, and when cooler weather started, my grandmother started making her beans. I didn’t care for the beans back then (although I’d like to taste them now), but my mother must have appreciated having dinner “to go.” She probably added ham or hot dogs and maybe scalloped potatoes. My brother has always loved baked beans. He still cooks them the old-fashioned way – soaking the beans, adding the molasses, salt pork, etc. and then cooking them in an old bean pot for hours and hours. He claims that real New England baked beans should be made with Yellow Eye beans, and that the very best way to cook them is in a bean hole.
“Yelloweye Beans,” Carol Crump Bryner, 2014
On Friday: Apples – An Addendum
The well-used bean crock was a familiar site in my mother’s oven as well. Like you, I was never a big fan as a youngster but they have grown on me over the decades. I wonder how many generations you would have to go back to find the first “bean hole”? I’m sure that the origins of that cooking method are lost in the mists of pre-history.
I’ll ask my brother about the bean hole. He might know more history about it than I do. I know that there are still alot of “bean hole suppers” going on in Maine.
I don’t know yellow-eyed beans or whatever is a “bean-hole,” but loved reading about this tasty meal and the tradition of comfort behind it.
The bean hole, from what I understand, is just a hole in the ground filled with something hot that surrounds the bean pot. It’s covered up for a day or two, and then you eat the beans, which may or may not be cooked completely. I had a report from one bean hole supper attendee that the bean hole beans she ate outside on a chilly Maine evening were not as well done as she would have liked.
I am ready to make a batch, the aroma of the cooking beans sends me to a “warm fuzzy spot”! Thanks for reminding me.
I love baked beans! But I’ve never made them like your grandmother and brother. As soon as it gets cold, I’m going to make a big pot of them and simmer them for a long time. I may use Anasazi beans, my favorites – they’re pretty (red and white) and tasty. A good idea to serve them with ham or hot dogs and scalloped potatoes.
I remember you telling me about those Anasazi beans and going out and buying my own. I don’t think I ever got any farther than admiring them in their jar. They WERE very pretty.
Every summer while I was counseling at camp we had a “bean hole bean” day. We prepared the beans in the kitchen by soaking them overnight then draining and seasoning them. We had a big black cast iron kettle into which we put the beans. We put the lid on and sealed it tightly with a cheesecloth and a flour and water “paste”. A hole had been dug the day before and lined with rocks. A fire was kept burning all evening and night to get the rocks very hot. In the morning we had quite a ceremony of putting the bean pot onto the rocks in the hole. Then we covered it all up with dirt. That evening we uncovered the bean pot, lifted it out of the hole and brushed it off. Then we broke the flour seal and took off the cheesecloth. Yummmmmm. Delicious beans! Served these with wonderful biscuits cooked by fires with reflector ovens.
( I must admit that since we were feeding an entire camp of girls and staff, we often had large cans of beans in the kitchen in case the bean hole beans did not turn out. Don’t know if we ever used them, however.)
Thanks, Nancy. I love hearing just how this was done. I had no idea about the cheesecloth and flour paste part of it. The only thing I remember making at camp were those awful “doughboys” made of Bisquick. We mixed up a lumpy pasty dough and molded it around our sticks, then held them over the fire where they either burned on the outside and remained doughy on the inside, or just fell off the stick into the fire. If you managed a successful one you could fill it with jam and eat it, which was actually pretty good. Your camp sounds alot more “culinary” than mine.