Trying not to hate a Baked Beans Sandwich.

This entire post only happened because I remembered having a can of baked beans in my pantry from two or three months ago. We were talking about The List and I said, “I need an excuse to eat these goddamn baked beans, so I’ll make a baked beans sandwich.” Well, having said that, I checked and discovered I’d given the can of baked beans away. Which makes sense, because I hate baked beans.

Crit’s post, specifically her discussion about Australian vs. American baked beans, was really enlightening for me about exactly why–I had no idea that in other places, baked beans don’t have that weird cloying brown-sugar/molasses sweetness they have here in America. Despite the fact that lately, I’ve been positively addicted to buying rainbow movie-theatre boxes of Nerds and washing them down with bottles of Coke Zero (I TOLD you I eat crap!), I’m generally not a fan of sweets. When I want a treat, I want something savory–a burrito rather than a chocolate bar, for example. Baked beans look like they’d be something I like, but taste-wise, they are a bait-and-switch–one I have hated since I was a little kid.

Knowing I’d agreed to write about this sandwich for the List, I stopped by the grocery store today and picked up the smallest can of baked beans I could find, and figured that’d be good because god knows I didn’t want to choke down any more baked beans than I absolutely had to. Once I got home and started making the sandwich, I did what I could to minimize the pain. Some generous friends of mine had given me part of a loaf of high-quality white bread they’d bought at a bakery, because they accidentally ordered a bigger size than they’d planned to. I cut a few slices off that loaf, chopped them in half in the middle, and used them for my sandwich bread, which was a significant step up from generic sliced sandwich bread from Kroger. I toasted the pieces of bread and, taking a tip from wikipedia, spread butter on the inside of the bread before adding the baked beans.

I cooked the beans themselves in a small pot with a bunch of barbecue sauce added in. The strategy there was to garnish the baked beans with a flavor that was close enough to that of the beans not to clash, but was also a flavor I like significantly better than that standard baked beans flavor. I thought about the hot sauce I use for tacos, but decided that the tastes were just too far apart. Fortunately, I had a bottle of Famous Dave’s Rich & Sassy Barbecue Sauce (a personal favorite) in the fridge, and I just threw a big old glob of that stuff into the pot with the baked beans and let it simmer for several minutes while I toasted the bread. When I was done, I spread some beans onto the two halved slices of bread I’d toasted, being careful not to overload them and make a sandwich that was guaranteed to spill beans all over everywhere.

Shaky hands make blurry photos. Oops.

This left slightly less than half of the 8 oz can of baked beans still sitting in the pot. I figured I’d probably just throw them away, and sat down to slog through the sandwiches I’d made.

Here’s the weird part: all the steps I took to try and make eating a baked beans sandwich not suck actually seemed to have worked. It wasn’t an out-of-this-world taste sensation or anything, but I can’t deny that this baked beans sandwich was… actually pretty good. In fact, after I’d eaten the (relatively small) sandwiches I started out with, I found myself pleased enough with the taste that I cut another slice of bread, toasted and buttered it, then crammed all of the baked beans left in the pot onto that sandwich. The result was considerably messier than the first two sandwiches had been (even they kinda dripped beans everywhere at first), but the result was that I ate an actual full meal, and even rather enjoyed it.

Messier sandwich, clearer photo. Funny how that works.

So, would I eat this meal again? Will I, in fact, add baked beans sandwiches to the regular rotation of stuff I cook around the house? Well, let’s not get crazy. I really can’t see myself returning to this particular dish of my own free will under any sort of normal circumstances. I’m not likely to have high-quality bread around the house on a regular basis, first of all. Second of all, there are so many things I legitimately like better, I don’t think I’d ever reach for the baked beans if I were at the supermarket picking out things to prepare over the next week or so. But next time I’m in the kind of spot I get into all too frequently, where I’m low on cash and have to make do with anything I can find in the pantry, I’ll at least be able to do something with that random can of baked beans at the back of the shelf other than give it away. I’ll go ahead and call that a win.

Drew

I’m a transgender weirdo who loves music, books, comics, and all kinds of other geeky crap. I edit an arts/music/culture magazine in my hometown of Richmond VA (rvamag.com). But let’s not talk about my day job. Let’s talk about food. I love food.