Cooking Failure
So, I've been spending the past year or so learning to cook more interesting things. Previously, I had just been concentrating on baked goods, cookies, cakes, breads, and most recently brownies. I've gotten quite good at the baking thing. Most of the time, if something doesn't come out right (like about a month ago I baked the Worst Brownies Ever, despite following an award winning recipe. Yes, it was the recipe's fault, not mine) I can figure out exactly where it went wrong and fix it in the next trial recipe or two. I have no idea what I did yesterday.
I set out to make baked beans, the kind you eat with good barbeque stuff. I like them, and I figured they couldn't really be that complicated. So, I looked at a bunch of different recipes to see what the basic ingredients, cooking times, and methods were. I based a recipe on a combination of several. Since I didn't have a cast iron dutch oven, I decided to use my crock pot (yes, I have a crock pot, it makes REALLY good stews and beef stroganoff with hardly any effort). I checked again with several recipes, and crock pot "baked" beans were supposedly utterly feasible.
Yesterday before work, I set said dried beans to soak, by the time I would get home it would have been 8 hours, plenty of time for soaking dried beans. I prepared the beans in the crock pot whille we cooked dinner. Since the cooking time on them was 8-10 hours I figured cooking them over night would be best. Since it was my first trial, I didn't want any sort of meal revolving around them, and baked beans for breakfast didn't sound too ridiculous.
So at six this morning I got up to check on what should have been a pot of well cooked beans. They weren't. It didn't look like thay had taken in ANY more moisture, let alone turn into a pot of delicious baked beans. I did remember around 5 that I had forgotten mustard, but that shouldn't have affected the cooking, just the flavor. The beans were still hard and I have no idea what I did wrong. I haven't a clue where to begin to "fix" this recipe for another trial.
I'm a little sad.
I set out to make baked beans, the kind you eat with good barbeque stuff. I like them, and I figured they couldn't really be that complicated. So, I looked at a bunch of different recipes to see what the basic ingredients, cooking times, and methods were. I based a recipe on a combination of several. Since I didn't have a cast iron dutch oven, I decided to use my crock pot (yes, I have a crock pot, it makes REALLY good stews and beef stroganoff with hardly any effort). I checked again with several recipes, and crock pot "baked" beans were supposedly utterly feasible.
Yesterday before work, I set said dried beans to soak, by the time I would get home it would have been 8 hours, plenty of time for soaking dried beans. I prepared the beans in the crock pot whille we cooked dinner. Since the cooking time on them was 8-10 hours I figured cooking them over night would be best. Since it was my first trial, I didn't want any sort of meal revolving around them, and baked beans for breakfast didn't sound too ridiculous.
So at six this morning I got up to check on what should have been a pot of well cooked beans. They weren't. It didn't look like thay had taken in ANY more moisture, let alone turn into a pot of delicious baked beans. I did remember around 5 that I had forgotten mustard, but that shouldn't have affected the cooking, just the flavor. The beans were still hard and I have no idea what I did wrong. I haven't a clue where to begin to "fix" this recipe for another trial.
I'm a little sad.
posted by Chrissy at 10/27/2004 01:59:00 PM
2 Comments:
I'm sad, too.
We just got a crockpot at Goodwill (it's the awesome orage one--I'll post a picture when I get time), but we haven't used it yet.
Now I'm scared.
On a good note, there's an awesome listing of a bazillion crockpot recipies online--including one for crockpot TACO CASSEROLE!!! Hooray!!
Cheer up! A can of pinto beans and some barbeque sauce set on the stove for a little while (20 min?) makes DAMN FINE baked beans, if not as authentic as soaked and crocked. YUM!
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