Almost Clean Crock Pot Baked Beans w/Dried beans

Almost Clean Crock Pot Baked Beans

I have tried making truly "clean" baked beans, but I can never get it to taste... right.  We love our baked beans and we've had them for years, so I guess maybe we're just spoiled.  These are pretty close to "Clean" though, other than the BBQ sauce, everything else is good.  Here are a few that at least don't include HFC:

Stubbs Bar-B-Q Sauce
Bulls-Eye Barbecue Sauce (recently changed to no HFCS) -*note, it does have honey in it, but I'm fine with that.

Anyone have any more to add??

We are really enjoying family dinners in our new house!

Anyway, I appear to have finally gotten the right combination of a good crock pot and just the right beans.  My last crock pot had a hot spot and always burned everything in one section and didn't get hot enough throughout the rest of it to ever bake dried beans.  You can just use a pot in the oven if you like, but I am in love with my new crock pot and its... interesting settings, so I've been using it for everything I can.

I also use a variety of beans.  I don't know why... I'm just weird that way.  Using the crockpot takes ALL day.  I would recommend starting them the night before with the water, then adding your broth, BBQ & seasonings first thing in the morning so they'll be all nice and cooked up for dinner time.  These are odd measurements because I had random bags of beans half gone and I lost ALL the rest of my photos, so I can't even look back at them to see:(  Use whatever you want, you'll want to only fill up your crock pot or pan 1/3rd of the way full, because these suckers GROW.

Ingredients: (This filled my 5 qt crock to almost overflowing:)
1/2 bag of white beans
1 bag of black beans
1 bag of Great Northern beans
1 carton of beef broth or vegetable broth
1 medium-large onion
1 bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce
1 Tbsp. Chili Powder for a tiny bit of kick
*My meat eaters love it when I add bacon, sausage &/smoked sausage to theirs.

I LOVE this crock pot.  Seriously, it fits my A.D.D. nature perfectly:)

Directions:
1.  Put all dried beans in the crockpot.  Fill with water.
**Do not add salt or salt containing ingredients until the skins are soft**

2.  Cook on medium/low for 4-6 hours until the skins of the beans are soft.
**Our crock pot "low" seems to be much closer to the medium on my old one**
***If using the oven, bake COVERED on 300 for 4 hours or until skins are soft***

3.  Once skins are soft, drain 1/2 the water, then ADD broth, onions and barbeque sauce.  If you have meat lovers, you can add sausage, bacon, ground beef, hot dogs... but remember, these are NOT "clean" foods (My husband and 17 year old son don't really care about clean eating when it comes to meat:) To keep it clean, you could use chopped flank steak.

4.  Bake on high (oven 350-375) for 4 hours or until beans are soft.

5.  After two hours on high, uncover the beans and add the remaining seasoning.

DRIED BEAN TIPS:

Adding the broth as soon as you can AFTER the skins are softened gives them a LOT more flavor.  I used to make the mistake of cooking them in the water too long and they were always bland.

Stir at least every hour.  This helps the beans always cook evenly so you don't have annoying little hard beans in there.

Stir frequently when cooking for the last couple of hours uncovered.  This will prevent the beans on top from drying out, whilst allowing the sauce to cook down to a nice, thick consistency.

These beans cook down to a nice, thick, full of flavor texture that you will LOVE!   Let me know how it worked for you!

Clean Eating #149: Super Healthy Mexican Taco-Bean-Chili-Soup-Like-Dish

Super Healthy Mexican Taco-Bean-Chili-Soup-Like-Dish

Yummmy!!

Relax Ladies and Gentlemen, Children, Puppies and other small pets who may or may not have been waiting for me to come back...

Because I'm BACK!!

*Sort of.  Actually, next Wednesday, I'm heading out to L.A. with my two girls where we'll stay with several of my mom's friends, be all touristy and I'm going to audition for "The Voice Season 2".  We'll be gone about two weeks.  Unless we hate it, then we'll come back sooner.  Although I imagine a 33 hour train ride after a 4 hour drive will make anything seem tolerable... and, basically, anything that isn't rural town USA will surely be tolerable.

The ingredients (I made a HUGE batch of this and it was REALLY cheap, so it would be great for a big family gathering, potluck or some kind of group gathering.  My family ate half of it in one 24 hour period.  All 6 of us (except the ten year old doesn't really eat much... she prefers to paint):

Oh wait, I was going to start with the recipe.  With school starting soon, my A.D.D. is in full swing... my apologies!

THE INGREDIENTS:

1 bottle of Low Sodium Tomato Juice

1 Large, Industrial sized can of Tomato Sauce 

(if you're going small, just use about equal amounts of sauce and juice and vary according to your tastes)

1 Carton of Vegetable Broth

2 bags of Kidney Beans

2 bags of small red beans

2 bags of White Navy Beans

1 bag lentils

1 bag of frozen spinach

Seasonings:

Mrs. Dash Extra Spicy (1/2 bottle)

Mrs. Dash Southwest Chipotle Seasoning

And here I am modeling the secret ingredient (well, if secret means that I told everyone, but you can't SEE it, then that's what I mean by secret).  You guessed it, pureed spinach in tomato sauce.  I AM that good.

You can also see some of the 20 pounds I've put back on since the epic stress has taken over my summer.  And on a perhaps unrelated note, let me just say that parenting can be hard as hell.  Even if all the things you THOUGHT might go wrong DIDN'T ~ you get new, EXTRA surprises... ahhhh... yeah, its lovely.

Directions:

Prepare your dried beans (you might want to do this the night before, I just did it in the morning and had the soup for dinner.  You could even use a crockpot if yours works well and you're gone for the day)

*I soak mine for about 3-4 hours or even overnight if I remember.

*Then bring to a boil on the stove, then turn to medium or med-high heat & cook until soft. (they grow a LOT, so keep them covered with lots of water!)

*Do NOT add anything with salt until the skins of all the beans are soft

ONCE YOUR BEANS ARE READY:

Drain 2/3rds of the liquid.

Puree your frozen spinach with some tomato juice **Note:  Do NOT do this if the juice is hot, thinking that SURELY the frozen spinach will cool it off enough.  Scroll back up if you think you might forget this tip.

Add all of your other ingredients (including the lentils) and simmer until you're ready to eat.

This soup tastes fantastic with grilled cheese, tortilla chips or whole wheat tortillas.  My kids all have their own way of eating it (all of these include cheese:).  As my resident carnivore, Kainan even cooks ground beef to throw in his.  I tend to 'toast' a whole wheat tortilla under the broiler and use it as a dipper:)

Verdict: This was AWESOME.  Even my meat eaters didn't miss the ground beef in this.  With all the different textures of the various beans, it was just wonderful.  The pureed spinach seemed to deepen the flavor without actually adding any 'green' taste to it.  My husband is reading this book:

 

And is totally sold on the "Slow Carb Diet", so he wants a lot of lentils and spinach.  This soup is a great crowd pleaser, it fits his diet, its incredibly versatile and tasty and HEALTHY!  Yay!!

And for anyone who came back to read again, thank you!:)  I'll try to be better now that it isn't constantly over one hundred and ten degrees outside!

Clean Eating #117: White Bean & Spinach Veggie Burgers

White Bean & Spinach Veggie Burgers

Ingredients

1 Medium onion, peeled & sliced into thin rings

4 Tbsp Olive Oil

1 1/2 cups cooked white beans

2 egg whites

1/4 cup Kalamata olives, chopped finely

1/2 tsp lemon juice

3/4 cup whole wheat bread crumbs

1 cup finely chopped fresh or frozen spinach (thawed and drained)

Seasonings to taste:

Mrs. Dash Spicy Seasoning

Pepper

Garlic Salt

Directions:

Heat the oil and cook the sliced onions on medium to med-high heat until carmelized (20-30 minutes), stirring OFTEN so they don't burn.

Mix together remaining ingredients except Spinach

In the food processor, blend half of the ingredients.

Mix with unblended ingredients, including the spinach and the onions.

Form into patties and press into a plate of ground flax seed

Heat skillet to medium heat, lightly oiled with olive oil.  Cook the patties, turning after about 8-10 minutes.

Serve on a Whole Wheat Bun with lettuce and tomato

Verdict:  These were really good.  I want to make sure to have garlic to add next time for some extra flavor, but these were VERY tasty and didn't last long!  Still with the texture.... though I'm not really sure what to do about it.  I don't mind the texture as long as it tastes good, but my hubby definitely doesn't care for it.  I must find a way to make a more... solid veggie burger.  Thanks to my book, I have a lot of recipes to try!

Clean Eating #115: Vegetarian Black Bean Rice Fiesta Burgers

Vegetarian Black Bean Rice Fiesta Burgers

Served with mustard, tomatoes, lettuce and a whole grain bun.

I adapted this recipe slightly from this book (because I was missing some ingredients)

This is adapted from the recipe "Chipotle Black Bean Burgers" on page 91.

(My) Ingredients:

3/4 cup of cooked lentils
1 1/2 cups of cooked black beans
1 medium onion, roughly chopped
1 cup cooked mixed wild and brown rice
1 cup cooked (frozen) corn
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
3 dried Japanese red Chile Peppers
3 Tbsp salsa (My salsa recipe is here, I make several gallons at the start of every month and freeze them in small bags in the freezer)
Juice of 1 lime
4 pieces of bread dried and crumbled.
2 egg whites
1/4 cup Parmesan Cheese

Mix all the ingredients except the eggs,  corn and onions.
Puree about half of the ingredients.
Add the egg, corn and onions.
Form into patties and cook on a griddle/pan lightly oiled on medium for about 10 minutes on each side.

Verdict:

Paris, Jaedin and I loved these.  They had a MUCH firmer texture than the last ones... and MORE texture with all the different ingredients.  Patrick still didn't care for the texture.  He said the flavor was fantastic, but he can't get past the 'soft' texture.  I ate two of them yesterday... and I was full ALL day.  They are crazy filling!  I call it a win... and I'll keep trying different ingredients and recipes to see if I can change my husband's mind!