Transform canned pork and beans into superb baked beans by stirring in peppery-sweet root beer, dry mustard, and hot sauce. The 5-minute prep time might make this dish one of your summertime favorites.
Diet root beer doesn't have the sugar needed to create the syrup for the beans' sauce. Having tried substituting diet coke for coke and diet root beer for root beer in a couple of other barbecue-type recipes, trust me: stay away from the diet! It turns bitter and never gets that lovely syrupy flavor/texture needed. If you want a low-glycemic index alternative, perhaps try agave syrup or even a little maple-flavored agave syrup. Better for Type1D & Type2D, and should still give the syrup-y yum we're looking for :)
Big Hit at the Labor Day BBQ
Made this side dish for an Independence Day party I hosted. I made it according to directions, but mistimed it and it ended up being done about 45 minutes ahead of the grilled food. I just kept it in the oven on the 'warm' setting and albeit my fear of it potentially being overdone, it turned out wonderful. Everyone loved it and thought it had great flavor.
I personally would never use pork and beans so will gladly be using regular backed beans then turning up the flavor
Wondering - why not diet root beer??? Haven't tried it yet, but it sounds intriguing.
I cooked these longer at a lower temperature and they turned out great! Definitely my new favorite baked bean recipe.
WOW!! My family loved this recipe. The only thing I did different was added a pound of ground beef and doubled the sauce. It was wonderful!!
This was easy and delicious. I can definitely taste the root beer. This will be my go to recipe for potluck dinners and family get-togethers. Just wonderful!
Baked beans are baked beans to me, but my family loved these. They were smoky from the bacon and bbq sauce. I couldn't really taste the root beer, but I liked the twist of adding it instead of brown sugar.
My mouth watered when I read the name of this recipe. The baked bean recipe my family has used for years is a 32 oz can of Van De Camp's baked bean, bacon, onion, 1/2 cup ketchup and 3/4 brown sugar. I thought this recipe would be pretty similar, except turned up a notch with the BBQ sauce and rootbeer. The flavors just didn't come through like I would have hoped. The recipe I've always made creates a thick, sweet sauce....this was ok, but I really thought pretty bland. I guess it all depends on what you think of when you think of baked beans. We probably won't be making this one again.
Regretably, I was dissappointed. I liked the idea of adding root beer to baked beans because I thought it would add a nice twist. The flavors of the sauce seem like they would be good together. However, when I make the recipe again, I would like to use regular canned beans instead of pork-n-beans because I couldn't taste the difference. One reason I would use other beans is to control the sugar content. Another is that using pork-n-beans defeats the purpose of the recipe because those beans already have a syrup-y sauce. Using rinsed, canned pinto beans (or other whole bean) would help the tastes in the recipe to stand out. Also, you may want to try preparing dry pinto beans yourself before adding them to the recipe.
