As a kid growing up in a Mayflower family in southern Maine (1950’s) baked beans were a Sunday staple. On a cold winter day my father would stoke a wood cook stove in the basement. After soaking Great Northern beans overnight my mother put them in a ceramic pot, adding pepper, some dry mustard, water to cover, a chunk of salt pork, a hug dollop of molasses and occasionally an onion. It would go in the cook stove oven by mid-morning. She also started bread. Then late in the afternoon the risen bread would go into the oven and around 4 or 5 we would have baked beans and home-made baked bread for supper.
I grew up in Central Maine(Somerset) and still remember Bean Pole Bean Suppers at the local church, they’d cook the beans in coals in a bean pot in a hole in the ground , from local belief that the baker wouldn’t fire the oven and some homes would observe Sundays as a Sabbath and not work or run home ovens. They were a big community event to go to a Bean Pole Supper even when I was growing up there in the 90’s. I still make home made Beans at home with double the amount of Salt Pork (so every bite has pork bits) and a whole large onion for flavor, molasses , pepper, dry mustard, of course, and home made Brown Bread.
I am an Arizona 1950s baby, and in the winter Mother frequently made B&M canned brown bread (steamed) served with B&M canned Boston baked beans. It was her go to meal when she was in need of a quick dinner. The whole family loved it. Last year, when caring for my toothless father aged 95+, I was having great difficulty preparing meals for him. Suddenly I remembered! Many of his last meals were Brown bread and Boston beans. He loved it, and so did I!
Canned baked beans are not good and very generic tasting and almost tastes like school cafeteria food. But in my experience adding bacon to it improves it.
As a New Englander, Boston baked beans were on the menu on Saturday night with hot dogs. Great video, Ryan really inspires with his presentation and overall personality.
It's common in my part of England ( East Anglia) to eat peas pudding and saveloys . Saveloys have been known since the early 18th century, a highly seasoned red skinned sausage made from pork offal ( brain , lights , etc) but nowadays any meat from pork to chicken or a mix .
@@benjaminscribner7737 Quite delicious. We use chick peas ( known as Ramsciches in the old journals) for the pudding , not sure whether saveloys are available in the US . They are ether boiled separately, steamed over the pudding while cooking or fried .
When my mom was in the navy the mess hall would bake beans in the oven all night long low and slow and serve them for breakfast. Mom spent the rest of her life trying desperately to duplicate that recipe, but she never managed it. Grandma very nearly got it when she had the old coal stove. The trick was the fire started out hot, but slowly and gradually cooled down overnight resulting in a unique taste and texture. Salt pork, molasses, and onions were involved she thought, but the proportions were hard to get and, of course, that variation in temperature wasn't/isn't possible with a gas or electric oven.
it's probably more about the pot it was cooked in than the heat source, you can feather the heat down gradually and use spacing on a gas stove to mimic the lowering heat of a fire, the pot's affinity for holding onto heat and how fast it's released into the beans might be the missing key here. maybe try cast iron? or something heavier?
@@justinjanecka3203 No, 20-30 years ago people watched TV. Today they watch RUclips instead, which is my point. Channels like Townsends have replaced TV which is now just trash and propaganda.
As a boy growing up in Maryland (I am 79 years old) we did not eat nor make baked beans, but your recipe about Indian pudding makes me think of a dish Mama would make from time -to-time: spoon bread, which she would bake in a Pyrex casserole dish. I can see similarities to Indian pudding. We would spoon it out on our plates, add some butter, and enjoy it. We loved it. Another dish was split-pea soup, to which she would add a ham-hock and some onions. I still love it, and can see a kinship to Peas pudding. We never made peas pudding. On the other hand, my New Hampshire born wife, grew up on baked beans, but she has never tried to bake them, instead learning (very well) to make a big pot of various beans (brown, white, October beans), and black-eyed peas. She will doctor them up a bit, adding hot peppers, onions, of course the mandatory piece of pork (usually) and even some tomatoes. It's all good!
My wife, not only makes the most delicious baked beans, but also makes green beans, potatoes and meat. Also delicious soup beans. I'm blessed that my wife is a great cook, creating meals and a side dish from beans and other ingredients...
Native Bostonian here who owns his own bean pot. I love making Boston Baked Beans and I'm grateful to you for showing the origins of this wonderful dish. Thank you for sharing so much of our history and culture.
As a lifelong resident of Massachusetts, born in Boston, it's nice to see the Townsends showing our region some love. And I'm going to have to make that Indian pudding too. 😋
I recognize the preparation of Boston Baked Beans, I grew up in East Providence, RI born in 1956 and can remember my great aunts soaking white beans and baking all day long using molasses and Coleman’s dry mustard and an onions pierced with cloves.
Our ancestors were settlers, pioneers, and conquerors - not immigrants. They created the civilization that later waves from other regions immigrated to. Not every American has an immigrant background. Had the colonists settled into Indian society, they would have been immigrants.
I grew up 12 miles from Boston. I remember in 1949 that my dad would bring a pot of beans to our local bakery, which I remember was in the local A&P store, on Saturday morning after 8 AM. They would use the still hot ovens that they had baked bread in to cook the beans. Dad would go back to get them at 4 PM. The beans would be hot and bubbly and showed signs of boiling over during the process. They had two metal tags, one would be attached to the bean pot and the other was given to my dad so he could pick up the right pot. The most important ingredient in Boston baked beans was molasses. Salt pork of course and some tomato paste.
LOL! You are right of course. I should have said the most important flavoring/condiment. It isn't Boston baked beans without the molasses. History is kind of lost if that is not acknowledged.
@@Alas-xj8cr That's true for modern boston baked beans, but molasses wasn't added to them until the mid 18th century, when the New England triangular trade from the Caribbean ramped up and suddenly sugar, molasses, and rum flooded the area. That's why this particular recipe doesn't include it, it's the original recipe.
Boston girls never smelled good on Monday mornings. Now remembering, they usually smelled like a rotten egg and stale beer sart the rest of the week too.
I grew up in New England with my mom's baked beans with molasses and homemade brown bread every Saturday night for years... Loved it.. My Dad would have them again for breakfast Sunday morning.
Perhaps, but nutmeg wouldn’t have been available to the average family. Asian spices were incredibly expensive and reserved for the very rich, and even then, early colonists probably wouldn’t have had access to them.
@@EricHenning That's not entirely true, you are generalizing. Nutmeg was INCREDIBLY popular in the colonies, and while it wasn't cheap it was at least somewhat available to everyone. It would certainly be a rare occasion for the poor, but it wasn't something that only the rich had, it was more on the level of something you splurged for on special occasions if you weren't rich. Nutmeg graters were near ubiquitous in American kitchens of the time and people even walked around with small, portable graters; That's how much they loved it. In 1760 the price in London was about 80 shillings a pound for Nutmeg thanks almost entirely to Dutch manipulation, which is ~£1,000 or so in modern currency, but remember that you don't need a whole pound of nutmeg. That VERY ROUGHLY works out to a modern ~£10 per individual nutmeg. A lot to pay for a spice, at least to us, but again, not completely out of range of anyone who wasn't subsistence farming, just very special. One nutmeg goes a long way when you are grating it yourself.
I’m from Texas, and beans are totally different here. They’re usually pinto beans. We don’t typically soak them at all (at least not anyone I know of), just sort them to check for bad ones and small rocks, then simmer them on the stovetop for around 4 hours or more, making sure to keep the water level above the beans. Different people like to season them their own way, so that’s extremely variable. My family likes salt pork and cilantro.
I LOVE this collaboration! That is a winning format. I wouldn't mind a little more talk at the end between the two as they eat, but really, I'm just nitpicking. I love the history and using several complimentary recipes! Great episode!!!
Love when Ryan and Jon tag team! My great aunt had a baked bean recipe that took something like 16 hours to bake in an oven. I've only ever had it once, and it was good...but I wonder if it stemmed from something like this.
In Maine, we have a tradition called “bean hole beans” Dig a hole, get the fire going, add the crock of beans and bury it in the coals. Supposedly it was an old recipe dating to at least the 1800s in the logging camps.
The rye & injun bread would later become Boston Brown Bread, or just Brown Bread. I have a church cookbook from 1909 on the west coast with no less that 10 differnt recipes for brown bread (compared to like 2 for regular dinner rolls). They use varying combinations of rye, corn, and/or wheat flour. On other channels, people frequently fondly remember eating baked beans, hotdogs, and brown bread typically if they grew up on the east coast.
A pot of Boston Baked Beans on a cold winter day is wonderful. Toothsome, savory, smoky and a little sweet. The only thing equal on a cold day is clam chowder and a Bloody Mary.
I grew up in Mass. I cannot emphasize how much I have *hated* Boston Baked Beans my whole life, to the point of disliking beans in food in general. I learned a LOT of really interesting history watching this video though! Thanks!
a) that is a crazy hunk of butter in that hasty pudding 😂 b) reminds me of grits. we always made grits by stirring cornmeal into boiling water - like polenta - and then once it was thick, mixing in some eggs/butter/cheese/hot sauce and pouring it into a dish and baking it.
Well, you'd be pleased to learn that we possibly learned Baked Beans from the Native Americans! That's what I read online, anyway. I'm not sure how they didn't catch that. Maybe it's just a rumor, but it is on Wikipedia. I guess take it with a grain of salt, but don't dismiss it!
There are also very old meatless versions of baked beans, although my grandma, whose farming family usually included some bacon in their crockery bean pot, seldom made them veggie style. It's true - it's a VERY old type of food, as both Jon and Ryan say. And my grandma would bake her beans for at least 8 hours! It made the entire house smell fantastic. One antique recipe that I used to have required slow, overnight baking!
I love that you are eating and enjoying without making us listen to the chewing sounds. For some of us that is triggering to hear so Thank You. I've made baked beans for my family before. It was a time when I was feeding a family of six on 20$ a week. We were lucky in that milk, cheese and beans were some of the staples that we had access to. Still potatos, cheap cuts of meat and strict serving portions were necessary to see us through. Baked beans were perfect.
I’m a third generation New Mexico native of primarily Irish descent. Our traditional foods came by way of Appalachia, into Texas and New Mexico. We put garlic and chile on EVERYTHING! The bean recipes from the east are accentuated by the chiles, onions, garlic and corn from below the Southern border. Mexican influences are absolutely delicious and fun to blend with the heritage of my family.
Informative documentary, as ever, thank you. Here in Blighty, mushy peas and baked beans are readily available at all good fish n' chip shops. Not forgetting salt and vinegar, of course.
It's interesting mushy peas never caught on here in Boston. Where is a lot of traditional British dishes are here nothing to the effect of the mushy peas. Maybe that was popular in a different part of England at the time. Add fish and chips is very popular here
@@WhatsCookingTime became a major food dish in England in the early 1800s so highly unlikely that they were considered for consumption here…by then regular beans, tubers, and gourds were already well established crops and hard to supplant in diets
For what it's worth, I'm an old New Englander with notes from my relatives from this time period and later on this recipe. Look into yellow eye beans, they are great for this. They were created in the region for this purpose. Try soaking overnight, then blanching them for a few minutes so when you blow on them the skin pops. Then do a cold water rinse. That's what my family did then. No idea when baking soda came into it but it's part of the rinse now. They actually did use nutmeg, mustard, and molasses in this too.
OH and the type of pot impacts the amount of water you need. A 'bean pot' only needs it filled to just the top. If you use something like yours you need to watch it and add some.
We have a large fireplace with a circa 1730 beehive oven. I wonder how many pots of baked beans were left to simmer in the residual heat of that oven over the years.
It is interesting that baked beans was a common food in Boston. Baked beans are very common in french settler cuisine. But I guess, both people had a lot in common.
I'm a descendent of French Huguenots, and I was so interested to learn that they lived in a French speaking community in Virginia, had a French church with a French liturgy, and left a lot of signs of French culture (such as Fleur-de-lis and the Huguenot cross). I didn't realize how diverse colonial America was until I delved into my own genealogy!
Very cool! I live in Virginia in a house that was built in the 1730’s, there’s actually a plaque by the front door declaring it a Historic Site, placed by the Dept of the Interior. There’s a “House Diary” which has been kept almost uninterrupted since 1750, where visitors would have their names entered along with an introduction or a brief synopsis of their visit, to include a young G. Washington who stopped in for supper and “refreshment” in 1751 while surveying the valley. We still often cook our meals in cast iron pots over the giant kitchen fireplace, and I like to imagine I’m sitting in the same spot our first president sat, watching supper cook in the same fireplace he would have sat in front of, smoking a pipe with the Millers who lived here. Anyway, there’s an entry from 1762 from a “French Huguenot family from the area of Norfolk.” Can’t make out the name, but still pretty interesting.
My grandmother used to bake beans that included ketchup, mustard, molasses, the pork was already in the beans. The molasses is what makes the beans extra sweet.
That Indian pudding reminds me a lot of the southern spoon bread I used to get at a (sadly) long closed cafeteria. (Ballentine's in Raleigh's Cameron Village).
Right around the mid-18th century. Boston was an integral part of the Triangular Trade (manufactured goods to Africa, slaves to the Americas, raw materials like molasses to Great Britain), and excess molasses was simply incorporated into the local diet.
My family has Scandinavian roots, and brown baked beans have been a big part of their diets for hundreds of years. It all keeps on the shelf for a protein any time of the year.
Molasses remained a pretty big part of Boston until the early 20th century - Prohibition resulted in decreased demand for molasses and cane sugar eventually replaced molasses as a choice sweetener. Although people still like Boston baked beans and even canned brown bread exists (although no where as near as popular as it was in the early to mid 20th century)
So the funny part is that around Boston, the "boston baked bean" is the molasses "modern" type. If you want a "boston" baked bean similar to the original recipe in this video, you have to get out to Lowell, ma and Cote's market. Historically they're a french canadian bean but the recipe is much closer to this original boston recipe than what they call "boston baked beans" now.
My dad was from Boston. We had baked beans and boston brown bread ( which is a raisin Molasses bread) on Friday's for a meatless meal. It was delicious. If we didn't have brown bread we had corn bread .
"Father and I went down to camp, along with Captain Gooding, and there we saw the boys and men all eating hasty pudding! Yankee Doodle, keep it up, Yankee Doodle Dandy. Mind the music and the step and with the girls be handy!"
I lived in Boston for grad school in the mid 90s. Had some amazing baked beans in pubs. They all had molasses and mustard though too. Th the at Indian pudding looks amazing. I’d live to make it with maple syrup instead of sugar and , of course, nutmeg 😉
I always thought it was the addition of molasses that made the dish "Boston Baked Beans", especially since there was a great molasses flood in 1919 here.
I’m obsessed with baked beans. I often will eat them without any other food. Sometimes I add in baked beans, kidney beans, stewed tomatoes and ground beef or bison. So delicious. You just drain the kidney beans only, all other canned stuff goes in as is into a pan. Do not use any type of sprays or lard. Ground beef cooked ahead of time in a separate pan and thrown in, heat it for 4-5 mins on the stove and it’s done.
Great comments on how to prepare beans. I’ve done it in a pressure cooker, the “quick prep” method on the back of the package, and soaking overnight. Soaking overnight is definitely superior. The taste and texture of beans soaked overnight are miles above any other prep method. Likewise with the cooking methods: the longer it takes, the better it tastes. This is true for Boston Baked Beans, Navy Bean Soup, Split Pea Soup, 15-Bean Soup, etc. Bottom line, when you are going to make beans, make the time and take the time.
I had no idea baked beans were baked the entire cooking time. I learned to boil the beans first, then bake them in a casserole dish with molasses and bacon. I'll have to try it this way some time. Right now Aunt Sylvia is the Baked Beans Queen in the family, so I'll have to wait until she can't cook any more to take them to family events, but may that day not come too soon.
I can’t adequately express how much I enjoyed this video. Special shoutout to the second presenter - great vibe - like there’s no way anyone was following a recipe to the t for 200 years on baked beans. Like he said 300 degrees…3…4…6 hours…add liquid or don’t! This is real life.
Eight(?) years ago you folks did a baked beans recipe for a bee hive oven. I still bake my beans to that recipe. I can attest that 8+ hours is too long for beans. More than once I have woken up to a lovely aroma of baked beans in a cast iron Dutch oven that I put in before going to bed . . . only to find all the water cooked off. Six hours seems to be the Goldilocks time for folks using an electric oven that is not slowly cooling.
This recipe makes me want to try Boston Baked Beans again. I always hated the sweet flavors from the brown sugar/molasses. This omits that. Sounds perfect to me.
I'm from Alabama, my parents were Great Depression/ WWII, who grew up on small farms, watching this channel i like, yeah, i know. My younger years. Keep it up, guys, we grow thin on the earth.
Bostonian here like many others in the comments.. "brown bread" that we grew up with comes in a can that you steam, somewhat like an english pudding, however.. what are it's ingredients? Corn meal, rye and molasses!! An all Bostonian (and New England) staple... Also, I remember as a child, we got fresh new england corn at farm stands that was so good, we would only boil it for about 30 secs and it was ready to eat.. so sweet and delicious. How I miss home and realise how the foods we grow up with keep you rooted to your home culture ...
My mother had a really nice ceramic pot with a lid that she used as a cookie jar. I inherited that and doing a little research I discovered it was actually a bean pot. It was baby blue with a white handle on the lid with tiny flowers and a small hole to let steam out, and 2 small handles on the side of the pot. I might try your recipe in it.
A Maine bread called Anadama bread I am thinking must be a grandchild of Boston Puritan bread with corn, molasses and rye! It's amazing with Bean hole beans! 😁
I trust this man cooking the outfit is sick as hell and he seems like a wholesome dude you would cross paths with on a side quest who would give you game changing advice you wouldn’t expect to be important.
My early relatives landed in Massachusetts in the 1620’s and 1630’s then moved on to frontier Maine in the later 1600’s. Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s baked beans were among the more common weekly fare. My mother would bake beans or prepare other food for the Saturday night baked bean church suppers which are still fairly common today in the small village churches.
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As a kid growing up in a Mayflower family in southern Maine (1950’s) baked beans were a Sunday staple. On a cold winter day my father would stoke a wood cook stove in the basement. After soaking Great Northern beans overnight my mother put them in a ceramic pot, adding pepper, some dry mustard, water to cover, a chunk of salt pork, a hug dollop of molasses and occasionally an onion. It would go in the cook stove oven by mid-morning. She also started bread. Then late in the afternoon the risen bread would go into the oven and around 4 or 5 we would have baked beans and home-made baked bread for supper.
Based
Cozy
I grew up in Central Maine(Somerset) and still remember Bean Pole Bean Suppers at the local church, they’d cook the beans in coals in a bean pot in a hole in the ground , from local belief that the baker wouldn’t fire the oven and some homes would observe Sundays as a Sabbath and not work or run home ovens. They were a big community event to go to a Bean Pole Supper even when I was growing up there in the 90’s. I still make home made Beans at home with double the amount of Salt Pork (so every bite has pork bits) and a whole large onion for flavor, molasses , pepper, dry mustard, of course, and home made Brown Bread.
*Hole … got the names mixed up.
That sounds lovely
I am an Arizona 1950s baby, and in the winter Mother frequently made B&M canned brown bread (steamed) served with B&M canned Boston baked beans. It was her go to meal when she was in need of a quick dinner. The whole family loved it.
Last year, when caring for my toothless father aged 95+, I was having great difficulty preparing meals for him. Suddenly I remembered! Many of his last meals were Brown bread and Boston beans. He loved it, and so did I!
Boston 50s baby and my mom did too. She opened the cans, but I’ve made baked beans many times, but yet to make brown bread.
Brown bread is awesome and I’m continually shocked that it’s mostly a New England thing.
Canned baked beans are not good and very generic tasting and almost tastes like school cafeteria food. But in my experience adding bacon to it improves it.
I'm an Arizona 1960's baby and I remember the same thing!! As I got older, mom started making her own bread, but the beans were always a constant 😊😊
I think she has a reduced cooking time because she precooked them by keeping them by the fire overnight. Thanks for the video.
As a New Englander, Boston baked beans were on the menu on Saturday night with hot dogs.
Great video, Ryan really inspires with his presentation and overall personality.
My grandmother made a pot every saturday
It's common in my part of England ( East Anglia) to eat peas pudding and saveloys . Saveloys have been known since the early 18th century, a highly seasoned red skinned sausage made from pork offal ( brain , lights , etc) but nowadays any meat from pork to chicken or a mix .
@@georgerobartes2008 it sounds like something I would try
@@benjaminscribner7737 Quite delicious. We use chick peas ( known as Ramsciches in the old journals) for the pudding , not sure whether saveloys are available in the US . They are ether boiled separately, steamed over the pudding while cooking or fried .
and home made cole slaw..
This is like 2 episodes in 1! The Indian Pudding recipe is the spoon cornbread without canned corn I've been looking for.
Indian pudding is the best❤
When my mom was in the navy the mess hall would bake beans in the oven all night long low and slow and serve them for breakfast. Mom spent the rest of her life trying desperately to duplicate that recipe, but she never managed it. Grandma very nearly got it when she had the old coal stove. The trick was the fire started out hot, but slowly and gradually cooled down overnight resulting in a unique taste and texture. Salt pork, molasses, and onions were involved she thought, but the proportions were hard to get and, of course, that variation in temperature wasn't/isn't possible with a gas or electric oven.
The some navy cookbooksfrom different eras are publicly available online
it's probably more about the pot it was cooked in than the heat source, you can feather the heat down gradually and use spacing on a gas stove to mimic the lowering heat of a fire, the pot's affinity for holding onto heat and how fast it's released into the beans might be the missing key here. maybe try cast iron? or something heavier?
20 years ago, this could've been a History Channel show; it's that good.
History channel is too busy putting out non history like ancient aliens.
People still watch TV?
Ya it's sad to see what history channel is now compared to what it used to be
Food Network would have had it on if they ignored it
@@justinjanecka3203 No, 20-30 years ago people watched TV. Today they watch RUclips instead, which is my point. Channels like Townsends have replaced TV which is now just trash and propaganda.
As a boy growing up in Maryland (I am 79 years old) we did not eat nor make baked beans, but your recipe about Indian pudding makes me think of a dish Mama would make from time -to-time: spoon bread, which she would bake in a Pyrex casserole dish. I can see similarities to Indian pudding. We would spoon it out on our plates, add some butter, and enjoy it. We loved it. Another dish was split-pea soup, to which she would add a ham-hock and some onions. I still love it, and can see a kinship to Peas pudding. We never made peas pudding. On the other hand, my New Hampshire born wife, grew up on baked beans, but she has never tried to bake them, instead learning (very well) to make a big pot of various beans (brown, white, October beans), and black-eyed peas. She will doctor them up a bit, adding hot peppers, onions, of course the mandatory piece of pork (usually) and even some tomatoes. It's all good!
My wife, not only makes the most delicious baked beans, but also makes green beans, potatoes and meat. Also delicious soup beans. I'm blessed that my wife is a great cook, creating meals and a side dish from beans and other ingredients...
This guy is a national treasure
Native Bostonian here who owns his own bean pot. I love making Boston Baked Beans and I'm grateful to you for showing the origins of this wonderful dish. Thank you for sharing so much of our history and culture.
As a lifelong resident of Massachusetts, born in Boston, it's nice to see the Townsends showing our region some love. And I'm going to have to make that Indian pudding too. 😋
I recognize the preparation of Boston Baked Beans, I grew up in East Providence, RI born in 1956 and can remember my great aunts soaking white beans and baking all day long using molasses and Coleman’s dry mustard and an onions pierced with cloves.
My family arrived in Boston in 1630. Love seeing some history of the food. Good content as always.
Our ancestors were settlers, pioneers, and conquerors - not immigrants. They created the civilization that later waves from other regions immigrated to. Not every American has an immigrant background. Had the colonists settled into Indian society, they would have been immigrants.
I grew up 12 miles from Boston. I remember in 1949 that my dad would bring a pot of beans to our local bakery, which I remember was in the local A&P store, on Saturday morning after 8 AM. They would use the still hot ovens that they had baked bread in to cook the beans. Dad would go back to get them at 4 PM. The beans would be hot and bubbly and showed signs of boiling over during the process. They had two metal tags, one would be attached to the bean pot and the other was given to my dad so he could pick up the right pot. The most important ingredient in Boston baked beans was molasses. Salt pork of course and some tomato paste.
i would think the most important ingredient would be the beans!
LOL! You are right of course. I should have said the most important flavoring/condiment. It isn't Boston baked beans without the molasses. History is kind of lost if that is not acknowledged.
@@Alas-xj8cr That's true for modern boston baked beans, but molasses wasn't added to them until the mid 18th century, when the New England triangular trade from the Caribbean ramped up and suddenly sugar, molasses, and rum flooded the area. That's why this particular recipe doesn't include it, it's the original recipe.
Boston girls never smelled good on Monday mornings. Now remembering, they usually smelled like a rotten egg and stale beer sart the rest of the week too.
12 miles from Boston is NOT Boston...TOWNIE HERE!
I grew up in New England with my mom's baked beans with molasses and homemade brown bread every Saturday night for years... Loved it.. My Dad would have them again for breakfast Sunday morning.
So you were the people sitting behind me in church making all that noise. LOL
@@margarettickle9659 My Dad might have been.....not me 🥴🤣🤣
That Indian pudding clearly needed some nutmeg. ^-^
Perhaps, but nutmeg wouldn’t have been available to the average family. Asian spices were incredibly expensive and reserved for the very rich, and even then, early colonists probably wouldn’t have had access to them.
@@EricHenning That's not entirely true, you are generalizing. Nutmeg was INCREDIBLY popular in the colonies, and while it wasn't cheap it was at least somewhat available to everyone. It would certainly be a rare occasion for the poor, but it wasn't something that only the rich had, it was more on the level of something you splurged for on special occasions if you weren't rich. Nutmeg graters were near ubiquitous in American kitchens of the time and people even walked around with small, portable graters; That's how much they loved it.
In 1760 the price in London was about 80 shillings a pound for Nutmeg thanks almost entirely to Dutch manipulation, which is ~£1,000 or so in modern currency, but remember that you don't need a whole pound of nutmeg. That VERY ROUGHLY works out to a modern ~£10 per individual nutmeg. A lot to pay for a spice, at least to us, but again, not completely out of range of anyone who wasn't subsistence farming, just very special. One nutmeg goes a long way when you are grating it yourself.
I’m from Texas, and beans are totally different here. They’re usually pinto beans. We don’t typically soak them at all (at least not anyone I know of), just sort them to check for bad ones and small rocks, then simmer them on the stovetop for around 4 hours or more, making sure to keep the water level above the beans. Different people like to season them their own way, so that’s extremely variable. My family likes salt pork and cilantro.
I LOVE this collaboration! That is a winning format. I wouldn't mind a little more talk at the end between the two as they eat, but really, I'm just nitpicking. I love the history and using several complimentary recipes! Great episode!!!
Love when Ryan and Jon tag team! My great aunt had a baked bean recipe that took something like 16 hours to bake in an oven. I've only ever had it once, and it was good...but I wonder if it stemmed from something like this.
Fantastic as always. For the record: no one, and I mean no one, east of the Connecticut River calls or has ever actually called Boston "Beantown."
Exactly. We would look like idiots. Some reason Tourists😅 think it's the thing
That was the first thing I experienced when I was visiting Massachusetts: I was served a big portion of Baked Beans in Boston. What a great treat. 😊
In Maine, we have a tradition called “bean hole beans”
Dig a hole, get the fire going, add the crock of beans and bury it in the coals.
Supposedly it was an old recipe dating to at least the 1800s in the logging camps.
The rye & injun bread would later become Boston Brown Bread, or just Brown Bread.
I have a church cookbook from 1909 on the west coast with no less that 10 differnt recipes for brown bread (compared to like 2 for regular dinner rolls). They use varying combinations of rye, corn, and/or wheat flour.
On other channels, people frequently fondly remember eating baked beans, hotdogs, and brown bread typically if they grew up on the east coast.
Love this new format. Make more like this!
A pot of Boston Baked Beans on a cold winter day is wonderful. Toothsome, savory, smoky and a little sweet. The only thing equal on a cold day is clam chowder and a Bloody Mary.
Same could be said about chili but you don’t see me bragging about it like it’s the only option out there.
@roro54321 you're such an edge lord. I bet your posts on /pol/ are the best.
@@hoobaguy oh yeah, I’m gooning right now just thinking about it. So much rizz.
Cornbread and beans is what I grew up on. We were grateful that there was enough to keep us full
I grew up in Mass. I cannot emphasize how much I have *hated* Boston Baked Beans my whole life, to the point of disliking beans in food in general. I learned a LOT of really interesting history watching this video though! Thanks!
Try them again
@@moki7685 I’ll be dead before I “try” them again. 🤢
@@Ostenjagergo to Mexico
😂
@@OstenjagerI come from lands where people seasoned the food - trust me.
It will change your worldview being around Mexicans… especially on BEANS.
Eating things too regularly brings familiarity with a food, which breeds contempt for that food.
This channel is way better than the History Channel or the Food Network. Great job. Baked beans and bread are in my future. ❤
Well said!👍
a) that is a crazy hunk of butter in that hasty pudding 😂
b) reminds me of grits. we always made grits by stirring cornmeal into boiling water - like polenta - and then once it was thick, mixing in some eggs/butter/cheese/hot sauce and pouring it into a dish and baking it.
This is one of your best episodes. The balance of recipes, the perspectives on war, politics, and culture. All around fantastic!
Awesome, I frequently work across from where the tea party occurred. Really enjoyed the explanations in this episode!
That was an excellent episode. Very much appreciate the history of how Puritan and Native American food ways intertwined
Well, you'd be pleased to learn that we possibly learned Baked Beans from the Native Americans! That's what I read online, anyway. I'm not sure how they didn't catch that. Maybe it's just a rumor, but it is on Wikipedia. I guess take it with a grain of salt, but don't dismiss it!
There are also very old meatless versions of baked beans, although my grandma, whose farming family usually included some bacon in their crockery bean pot, seldom made them veggie style. It's true - it's a VERY old type of food, as both Jon and Ryan say. And my grandma would bake her beans for at least 8 hours! It made the entire house smell fantastic. One antique recipe that I used to have required slow, overnight baking!
Jon and Ryan Thank You and a Tip-of-the-Hat To the Both of You! What a great video and Be Safe.
I love that you are eating and enjoying without making us listen to the chewing sounds. For some of us that is triggering to hear so Thank You. I've made baked beans for my family before. It was a time when I was feeding a family of six on 20$ a week. We were lucky in that milk, cheese and beans were some of the staples that we had access to. Still potatos, cheap cuts of meat and strict serving portions were necessary to see us through. Baked beans were perfect.
I can't hear "Boston Baked Beans" without thinking about the candy-coated peanuts by the same name...
I love those things man so good
I thought that was all it was. I didn't know it was a real thing. Lol
Dollar Tree still sells them 😂
Fantastic history and video as always! So much richness in the history of Boston and surrounding areas
I’m a third generation New Mexico native of primarily Irish descent. Our traditional foods came by way of Appalachia, into Texas and New Mexico. We put garlic and chile on EVERYTHING! The bean recipes from the east are accentuated by the chiles, onions, garlic and corn from below the Southern border. Mexican influences are absolutely delicious and fun to blend with the heritage of my family.
I could eat green chile enchiladas with beans (any beans) and Spanish rice once a day every day with a sopapilla and I'd be just fine with that.
@@austinbell4685sounds delicious. I love it
Garlic and chiles....ahh speaking my food language man
Love this program. Keep it up Chefs!
Boston Native here. Thank you for covering!! My favorite foods are all local new England regional dishes so interested so see how things have evolved.
Just love the tag team with John and Ryan. More like this. ❤
Informative documentary, as ever, thank you. Here in Blighty, mushy peas and baked beans are readily available at all good fish n' chip shops. Not forgetting salt and vinegar, of course.
he got a bunch of basic historical facts wrong…
It's interesting mushy peas never caught on here in Boston. Where is a lot of traditional British dishes are here nothing to the effect of the mushy peas. Maybe that was popular in a different part of England at the time. Add fish and chips is very popular here
@@WhatsCookingTime became a major food dish in England in the early 1800s so highly unlikely that they were considered for consumption here…by then regular beans, tubers, and gourds were already well established crops and hard to supplant in diets
For what it's worth, I'm an old New Englander with notes from my relatives from this time period and later on this recipe.
Look into yellow eye beans, they are great for this. They were created in the region for this purpose.
Try soaking overnight, then blanching them for a few minutes so when you blow on them the skin pops. Then do a cold water rinse. That's what my family did then.
No idea when baking soda came into it but it's part of the rinse now.
They actually did use nutmeg, mustard, and molasses in this too.
OH and the type of pot impacts the amount of water you need. A 'bean pot' only needs it filled to just the top. If you use something like yours you need to watch it and add some.
Thanks!
Haven't caught one of your videos in a while. I didn't realize how much I missed them!
Great video and food history as always. Love the back and forth format from info to cooking!
History through food is such an amazing thing. Not just here. :)
I no longer live in Massachusetts, where I grew up, so I love when it crops up in stories like this.
Fantastic episode. I love the dual presentation with Jon and Ryan!
Keep up the good work guys ❤
We have a large fireplace with a circa 1730 beehive oven. I wonder how many pots of baked beans were left to simmer in the residual heat of that oven over the years.
What a wonderful thought!
A rye cornbread sounds absolutely amazing.
Loved John doing the history and Ryan doing the food part. But really loved the longer episode
Love these videos. A step back in time.
It is interesting that baked beans was a common food in Boston. Baked beans are very common in french settler cuisine. But I guess, both people had a lot in common.
I'm a descendent of French Huguenots, and I was so interested to learn that they lived in a French speaking community in Virginia, had a French church with a French liturgy, and left a lot of signs of French culture (such as Fleur-de-lis and the Huguenot cross). I didn't realize how diverse colonial America was until I delved into my own genealogy!
Very cool! I live in Virginia in a house that was built in the 1730’s, there’s actually a plaque by the front door declaring it a Historic Site, placed by the Dept of the Interior. There’s a “House Diary” which has been kept almost uninterrupted since 1750, where visitors would have their names entered along with an introduction or a brief synopsis of their visit, to include a young G. Washington who stopped in for supper and “refreshment” in 1751 while surveying the valley. We still often cook our meals in cast iron pots over the giant kitchen fireplace, and I like to imagine I’m sitting in the same spot our first president sat, watching supper cook in the same fireplace he would have sat in front of, smoking a pipe with the Millers who lived here. Anyway, there’s an entry from 1762 from a “French Huguenot family from the area of Norfolk.” Can’t make out the name, but still pretty interesting.
My grandmother used to bake beans that included ketchup, mustard, molasses, the pork was already in the beans. The molasses is what makes the beans extra sweet.
Really love the depth of this episode.
Greetings from Boston 😊
This man's channel is pf immeasurable value. Thank you for your valuable work and insight into our past.
That Indian pudding reminds me a lot of the southern spoon bread I used to get at a (sadly) long closed cafeteria. (Ballentine's in Raleigh's Cameron Village).
I love these videos! The history, the cultural context, and the foods all make for a great educational experience. Great job!
when did molasses make it into the bean recipes? it always seemed like an integral component of "baked beans"
Right around the mid-18th century. Boston was an integral part of the Triangular Trade (manufactured goods to Africa, slaves to the Americas, raw materials like molasses to Great Britain), and excess molasses was simply incorporated into the local diet.
I know Boston became a big center for rum & molasses production. I'm assuming around the time that was becoming more a thing, but it's just a guess.
@@porgy29 I think you might be right
My family has Scandinavian roots, and brown baked beans have been a big part of their diets for hundreds of years. It all keeps on the shelf for a protein any time of the year.
Molasses remained a pretty big part of Boston until the early 20th century - Prohibition resulted in decreased demand for molasses and cane sugar eventually replaced molasses as a choice sweetener. Although people still like Boston baked beans and even canned brown bread exists (although no where as near as popular as it was in the early to mid 20th century)
So the funny part is that around Boston, the "boston baked bean" is the molasses "modern" type.
If you want a "boston" baked bean similar to the original recipe in this video, you have to get out to Lowell, ma and Cote's market. Historically they're a french canadian bean but the recipe is much closer to this original boston recipe than what they call "boston baked beans" now.
Man, Ryan really does a great job on these videos. I've been a subscriber since your beginning, and I really enjoy Ryan's appearences. He fits well.
The Pudding with the Baked Beans would be awesome..
I can smell it...😋
My dad was from Boston. We had baked beans and boston brown bread ( which is a raisin Molasses bread) on Friday's for a meatless meal. It was delicious. If we didn't have brown bread we had corn bread .
Love what you do!!! Thank you for keeping history alive. 🫡
"Father and I went down to camp, along with Captain Gooding, and there we saw the boys and men all eating hasty pudding! Yankee Doodle, keep it up, Yankee Doodle Dandy. Mind the music and the step and with the girls be handy!"
Babe wake up a new Townsends video just dropped and it's about beans
I lived in Boston for grad school in the mid 90s. Had some amazing baked beans in pubs. They all had molasses and mustard though too. Th the at Indian pudding looks amazing. I’d live to make it with maple syrup instead of sugar and , of course, nutmeg 😉
Great combination of culinary and political history
You mean Boston baked beans aren’t candy coated peanuts? Those are my favorite beans 😂😂
It seems like it’s the great grandad of the modern pork and beans with molasses, onion, bell pepper, jalapeño, etc.
We still do it the old fashioned way. Salt pork chunks, great northern beans, and bake them overnight. Molasses, and a dribble of maple syrup.
Great job! This might be a fun series...
I always thought it was the addition of molasses that made the dish "Boston Baked Beans", especially since there was a great molasses flood in 1919 here.
Nah, what you do is add some of that dirty water.
@@garygood6804 Ha!
That vat of molasses was used primarily for munitions.
I’m obsessed with baked beans. I often will eat them without any other food. Sometimes I add in baked beans, kidney beans, stewed tomatoes and ground beef or bison. So delicious. You just drain the kidney beans only, all other canned stuff goes in as is into a pan. Do not use any type of sprays or lard. Ground beef cooked ahead of time in a separate pan and thrown in, heat it for 4-5 mins on the stove and it’s done.
Great comments on how to prepare beans. I’ve done it in a pressure cooker, the “quick prep” method on the back of the package, and soaking overnight.
Soaking overnight is definitely superior. The taste and texture of beans soaked overnight are miles above any other prep method.
Likewise with the cooking methods: the longer it takes, the better it tastes.
This is true for Boston Baked Beans, Navy Bean Soup, Split Pea Soup, 15-Bean Soup, etc.
Bottom line, when you are going to make beans, make the time and take the time.
Beans.. beans... Good for the heart... Need I go on..?
I had no idea baked beans were baked the entire cooking time. I learned to boil the beans first, then bake them in a casserole dish with molasses and bacon. I'll have to try it this way some time. Right now Aunt Sylvia is the Baked Beans Queen in the family, so I'll have to wait until she can't cook any more to take them to family events, but may that day not come too soon.
Thanks Jon,Ryan, and Crew 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
🍂🍂🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁🍂🍁🍂
I can’t adequately express how much I enjoyed this video. Special shoutout to the second presenter - great vibe - like there’s no way anyone was following a recipe to the t for 200 years on baked beans. Like he said 300 degrees…3…4…6 hours…add liquid or don’t! This is real life.
Eight(?) years ago you folks did a baked beans recipe for a bee hive oven. I still bake my beans to that recipe.
I can attest that 8+ hours is too long for beans. More than once I have woken up to a lovely aroma of baked beans in a cast iron Dutch oven that I put in before going to bed . . . only to find all the water cooked off. Six hours seems to be the Goldilocks time for folks using an electric oven that is not slowly cooling.
I really like the food kind of being in the middle with more lore and history after
I really like this video format!
I completely agree!
This recipe makes me want to try Boston Baked Beans again. I always hated the sweet flavors from the brown sugar/molasses. This omits that. Sounds perfect to me.
I'm from Alabama, my parents were Great Depression/ WWII, who grew up on small farms, watching this channel i like, yeah, i know. My younger years. Keep it up, guys, we grow thin on the earth.
Thank you, guys, for the video. You did Boston proud.
THANK YOU for your continued excellent content.
You’re telling me, Boston baked these beans?
Well, yes.
It's more than a feeling
Follow the farts.
Melvin Boston, last Tuesday.
It’s why Boston is called Beantown.
Bostonian here like many others in the comments.. "brown bread" that we grew up with comes in a can that you steam, somewhat like an english pudding, however.. what are it's ingredients? Corn meal, rye and molasses!! An all Bostonian (and New England) staple... Also, I remember as a child, we got fresh new england corn at farm stands that was so good, we would only boil it for about 30 secs and it was ready to eat.. so sweet and delicious. How I miss home and realise how the foods we grow up with keep you rooted to your home culture ...
This is a great channel.
I love New England during this time period. Nature, the food and the culture.
My mother had a really nice ceramic pot with a lid that she used as a cookie jar. I inherited that and doing a little research I discovered it was actually a bean pot. It was baby blue with a white handle on the lid with tiny flowers and a small hole to let steam out, and 2 small handles on the side of the pot. I might try your recipe in it.
A Maine bread called Anadama bread I am thinking must be a grandchild of Boston Puritan bread with corn, molasses and rye! It's amazing with Bean hole beans! 😁
no, it’s the child…Maine was part of Massachusetts until 1820 so its traditions like that are directly linked
Saying 'Hello' from Boston!
I trust this man cooking the outfit is sick as hell and he seems like a wholesome dude you would cross paths with on a side quest who would give you game changing advice you wouldn’t expect to be important.
My early relatives landed in Massachusetts in the 1620’s and 1630’s then moved on to frontier Maine in the later 1600’s. Growing up in the 50’s and 60’s baked beans were among the more common weekly fare. My mother would bake beans or prepare other food for the Saturday night baked bean church suppers which are still fairly common today in the small village churches.
Townsends- The Best of RUclips !
Best comment yet!
Boston baked beans. More than a feeling.
Think of this the next time you close your eyes and one slips away
@@LaundryFaerie Paaaarp!
i get that reference 🤣
This is a quality video! Well done!