I’m always looking for easy and delicious side dishes to round out my meals. Some of my favorite options include corn fritters, dill potato salad, baked potato wedges and these fabulous cowboy beans.
Cowboy Beans Ingredients
When you make this cowboy beans recipe you will need bacon, ground beef, onion, cans of pork and beans, mustard, brown sugar, molasses, ketchup, apple cider vinegar, fresh parsley, salt and black pepper. You can enjoy these cowboy baked beans as part of a delicious dinner with baked chicken wings, bbq pork chops and grilled flank steak. These beans are also great to bring to a barbecue or potluck!
How Do You Make Cowboy Beans?
To make this cowboy beans recipe, start by preheating your oven and partially cooking small squares of bacon in a large skillet. Remove the bacon from the pan and most of the bacon grease. Use the remaining bacon grease in the pan to cook the ground beef and then the onions. Season them with salt and pepper. Add canned beans, mustard, brown sugar, molasses, ketchup and apple cider vinegar to the pan and stir them to combine. Pour everything into a prepared baking dish and place the bacon on top. Bake the beans for 2 hours until the sauce thickens and the bacon cooks through. Take the cowboy beans out of the oven and garnish them with a bit of fresh chopped parsley, then enjoy.
Tips For The Perfect Cowboy Baked Beans
I typically use 90% lean ground beef, it has plenty of flavor without a lot of excess grease. If you use 80% lean beef you should drain the grease after cooking the meat. Feel free to assemble your ingredients and keep them in a refrigerator for up to 8 hours before you plan to plan to cook them. You will want par-cook your bacon and cook your onions and ground beef before you store them. I use yellow onions for this recipe; however, sweet onions would also work. I like to finely crumble the ground beef so that it mixes in nicely with the beans. If you prefer larger sized pieces of meat, that’s totally fine too! If you prefer to use a slow cooker, simply make the recipe as directed but instead of placing your beans in an baking dish, place in them in your crockpot and cook them on low for 2 hours.
Flavor Variations
While this cowboy baked beans recipe is great as-is you can absolutely add other ingredients to customize the flavors to your tastes.
Beans: You can use a variety of beans in addition to or in lieu of the baked beans. Some good options include white beans, kidney beans, great northern beans, cannellini beans, black beans, pinto beans or lima beans. Spicy: Feel free to add some hot sauce for an additional kick. You can also stir in a pinch of crushed red pepper flakes. Sweetener: If you want a sweeter dish or you don’t have molasses on hand, you can use maple syrup instead of molasses. Meat: Different types of pork can be used to flavor the beans such as salt pork, smoked sausage or diced ham. You can also swap out the ground beef for sausage or ground turkey. Seasonings: Feel free to add your favorite seasonings like chili powder, onion powder and garlic powder. You can substitute the yellow mustard for Dijon mustard.
These cowboy beans are a must-make recipe for those times when you need a side dish to feed a crowd. The smoky flavor just can’t be beat!
Cowboy Beans Video
