Name: Mae Mae's Sticky Peach-Molasses Baked Beans
Cook time: 3 h 30 min
Total time: 3 h 30 min
Yield: 8–10
Cuisine: American BBQ
Ingredients: 1 lb dried navy beans (soaked overnight, drained — or two 15-oz cans, drained, if time is short); 6 slices thick-cut bacon (cut into half-inch lardons); 1 medium yellow onion (diced fine); ⅓ cup dark molasses (the real kind, not blackstrap — you want sweet, not bitter); ¼ cup raw honey (local if you can get it); ⅓ cup dark brown sugar (packed); ½ cup ketchup; 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar (just enough to lift the sweetness); 1 tbsp yellow mustard; 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce; 3 cloves garlic (minced); 1 tsp kosher salt; ½ tsp black pepper (fresh cracked); 3 tbsp peach preserves (stir in at the end — this is the finish glaze); 1 cup chicken stock (to keep the beans from tightening up too fast)

Mae Mae's Sticky Peach-Molasses Baked Beans

Deep mahogany, good sticky, sweet smoke — these beans will hold court on any pit table.

Mae Mae Honey

@maemaehoney · Glaze Grandmother

My mama kept a pot of beans going every Saturday from May through September. Screen door open, peach tree dropping fruit in the yard, the whole house smelling like brown sugar and woodsmoke before noon. She said beans were how you told the truth about a cook — anybody can smoke a slab, but beans show patience.

These aren't baked beans from a can with a little sauce stirred in. We're talking deep mahogany color, the kind that comes from real molasses and honey layered over navy beans that have been sitting in peach-wood smoke long enough to mean something. The glaze tightens up into something almost caramelized around the edges of the cast iron. That's the good sticky. That's what you're after.

Cook these low and slow in an open cast-iron skillet right on the smoker grate — no lid, so the smoke gets in. They'll bubble and thicken and turn that color your grandmother would've recognized. Pull them when the top is set and the edges are pulling from the pan just a little. Rest them ten minutes before you serve. Baby, you'll eat these off a paper plate and remember it twenty years from now.

Method

Render the bacon

In a 12-inch cast-iron skillet over medium heat on your stovetop, render the bacon lardons until the fat is out and the edges are just starting to crisp. Pull the bacon with a slotted spoon and leave every drop of that fat in the pan. That fat is flavor, and you don't waste flavor.

Sweat the onion

Drop the diced onion into that bacon fat and cook it slow — eight minutes, stirring now and then, until it's soft and just starting to turn gold. Add the garlic and give it another minute. Your kitchen should already smell like something worth staying home for.

Build the glaze base

Add the molasses, honey, brown sugar, ketchup, vinegar, mustard, and Worcestershire right into that skillet. Stir until the sugar dissolves and everything comes together into one dark, glossy sauce. Taste it — it should be sweet, a little tangy, and deep. Season with the salt and pepper.

Add beans and stock

Fold in your drained beans and the cooked bacon. Pour in the chicken stock and stir gently so every bean gets coated. The mixture should look loose right now — that's right. The smoker is going to tighten it up into something beautiful.

Set the smoker

Get your smoker running steady at 250°F with peach and cherry wood. Blue smoke only — if it's rolling white and bitter, wait. This is not a dish that forgives haste. Set the cast-iron skillet uncovered on the grate and close the lid.

0.5h

First stir

After thirty minutes, open up and give the beans one slow, gentle stir from the bottom. You'll see the surface starting to take on color already. Resist the urge to stir more than once an hour — you want a set top, not a stirred-up soup. Close the lid back down.

1.5h

Watch the bubble

Around the hour-and-a-half mark the beans should be bubbling low and slow around the edges, and the top will start to look lacquered. If they look like they're getting too tight, add a splash of stock — two tablespoons at a time, no more. Trust the process.

2.5h

Finish glaze

Spoon the peach preserves across the top of the beans and don't stir them in. Let that layer sit and melt into the surface over the next thirty minutes. It'll turn glossy and sticky and pull the color into full mahogany. This is what my mama called the crown.

Pull and rest

When the edges are set and pulling just slightly from the sides of the skillet, and the top has that deep sticky glaze — pull the pan off the smoker. Rest uncovered for ten minutes. The beans will thicken as they cool just slightly, and that glaze will tighten into the good sticky you've been waiting on.

Ingredients

Method

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