Name: Slow Cooker Baked Beans with Bacon
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 4 h
Total time: 4 h 15 min
Yield: Serves 6-7
Cuisine: Gluten-Free
Ingredients: 2 (15-ounce) cans Great Northern beans, drained and rinsed (yields about 3 ½ cups beans); 3 slices bacon, chopped; ½ medium onion, diced; ½ cup ketchup (such as Tessemae’s or Primal Kitchen made without added sugar); 2 Tbsp. maple syrup (or less if your ketchup has added sugar); 1 Tbsp. molasses; 2 Tbsp. yellow mustard; 1 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar; 1 cup water

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Serve these easy Slow Cooker Baked Beans with Bacon at your next backyard BBQ and watch the sparks fly.

You can interpret that however you’d like.

I really just wanted to give you an opening to start singing ‘Beans, beans the magical fruit…’ if you felt moved to do so because I wasn’t going to make that the headline of this post even if it’s true! But really, these slow cooker baked beans with bacon are so easy and so delicious that they themselves are worthy of a small fireworks show. And there’s just something magical about smokey, sweet and sticky that’s hard to resist, don’t you think? Put these on the table at your next barbecue and watch the sparks of attraction fly.

Baked beans are the ultimate year-round comfort food.

In the winter, there’s nothing better than baking a pot of sweet and saucy beans in the oven to warm the house. Their smell is intoxicating thanks to the bacon and maple syrup. But in the summer, the last thing I want to do is heat up the oven so I’ve adapted my favorite baked bean recipe to use the slow cooker instead. And I’m so glad I did because these are now my go-to set-it-and-forget-it picnic and potluck offering. And my kids beg for them everytime I fire up the grill so having an never-ending pot of these Slow Cooker Baked Beans might have to become a reality around here because I grill several nights a week when the weather is nice.

Worth the (little extra) effort.

Cooking the bacon and onions before adding them to the slow cooker may seem fussy but trust me, you get a much better flavor because the onions mellow out when cooked in the reserved bacon fat and you get a thicker sauce. Cooking the bacon first also means you won’t have any pale rubbery blobs of bacon in your beans like you do when you open a can of pork of beans from the store. Yeah, just no.

And really, this only adds about 10 minutes to your life. If you’re really pressed for time, do this step up to 3 days in advance, storing the cooked onions and bacon separately in covered containers in the fridge before adding them to the slow cooker with the beans and sauce ingredients.

Keep cool and eat well this summer

Summer is all about eating well and kicking back to enjoy the good things in life so be sure to make room on the table for these slow cooker baked beans with bacon. And don’t forget the watermelon, potato salad, slaw, burgers, brownies, and cocktails too!

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Let's Get Cookin'

Slow Cooker Baked Beans with Bacon

Sweet and saucy baked beans made in the slow cooker are the perfect side dish for barbecues, potlucks, and picnics.

Author: The Real Food Dietitians
Prep Time: 15 mins
Cook Time: 4 hours
Total Time: 4 hours, 15 mins
Yield: Serves 6-7 1x
Category: Side Dish
Cuisine: Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Nut-Free

Print Recipe

★★★★★ 5 from 2 reviews

Ingredients

2 (15-ounce) cans Great Northern beans, drained and rinsed (yields about 3 ½ cups beans)
3 slices bacon, chopped
½ medium onion, diced
½ cup ketchup (such as Tessemae’s or Primal Kitchen made without added sugar)
2 Tbsp. maple syrup (or less if your ketchup has added sugar)
1 Tbsp. molasses
2 Tbsp. yellow mustard
1 Tbsp. apple cider vinegar
1 cup water

Instructions

Cook chopped bacon in a medium skillet over medium heat, stirring occasionally, for 7-8 minutes until almost crisp. Add onion to the pan with the bacon and cook an additional 4-5 minutes until the onion starts to soften. Remove from heat.
Transfer bacon and onion mixture to slow cooker. Add remaining ingredients and stir gently to combine.
Set slow cooker temperature to LOW and cook 4 hours, stirring a few times during cooking time.

Notes

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Nutrition

Serving Size: ½ cup
Calories: 179
Sugar: 8g
Sodium: 628mg
Fat: 4g
Carbohydrates: 25g
Fiber: 6g
Protein: 7g

What’s your favorite party-worthy summer side dish? Tell us about it in the comments below.

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Photo Credit: The photos in this blog post were taken by Jess of Plays Well with Butter.

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About Jessica Beacom

Jessica is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist living in Boulder, CO with her hubby and two daughters. She's been described as a 'real food evangelist' and loves sharing her knowledge with others to help them break free of the diet mentality and find their own food freedom. In her spare time she enjoys CrossFit, telemark skiing, mountain biking, teaching herself how to play the banjo and camping out under the stars.

Angie says

July 10, 2019 at 9:14 am

I’m a dry beans kind of gal! If you have time, you can probably do it all in the same crock pot. Use 1 1/2 cups of dry beans (or use a whole pound and just increase the rest of the ingredients or take some beans out before you add the rest of the ingredients). Cook them in the crock pot on low for 8 hours (if you can do it overnight) or high for 4 hours. Remove some (most, since you need several cups of water to cook the beans) of the liquid (some people would tell you to save it and use it for other cooking) and add the rest of the ingredients from the recipe, then cook for 4 hours on low. If you want to up the flavor of the beans themselves, I like to make broth in the crock pot overnight (onion, celery, carrot, bay leaf, bones if I have them, bacon or a ham hock, etc – wrap it all up in cheesecloth to make life easier), remove the solids in the morning, then add beans I soaked overnight to the broth and cook all day on low. You do end up with the crock pot going all day, but it can make some tasty, nutritious meals with surprisingly little effort. A caveat to cooking beans in the crock pot is that you don’t want to do it with red kidney beans (they have to be boiled for 10-15 minutes), and the amount of time it takes to cook can vary quite a bit based on the type, size, and age of the beans, although I’ve yet to have beans take more than 9 hours on low – that’s longer than I’m gone on a work day, so no big deal for me. This recipe would be forgiving because you get an extra 4 hours of cook time, so if you did 4 hours on high and still had a firm center in some beans, they’ll likely soften up just fine by the time they’re ready to serve. Canned beans are salted, so bear that in mind. You’ll see a lot of methods for salting dry beans that include salting the soak water, adding salt at the beginning of cooking, and adding salt at the end of cooking. People have strong opinions about what works best. You do you with the salt ;).

Sorry for the book, but I think sometimes using dried beans is a bit of a lost art and many people just don’t know how to make them. My goal for this year is to get to the point where I prepare a pound of beans every week to save money and increase fiber intake, and I work full time and have an 8 month old, so I need that crock pot to do the heavy lifting for me.

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Slow Cooker Baked Beans with Bacon