Bacon + ground beef add loads of flavor to these baked beans, making them the perfect addition to your summer barbecue.
I was really hoping to share a few barbecue recipes with you to go with your 4th of July meals, and I am pleased that I was able to eke this one out just in time. Baked beans aren’t usually my thing, but with these I keep finding myself back at the fridge, dishing up a small bit to add to whatever meal I happen to be having at that moment. So I am going to put these in the “yummy” category, and maybe that means that my husband will get them a little more frequently.
A few tips…
- Make it a meal. You can make these even heartier by adding more ground beef. I have doubled the ground beef in these and served them as a meal (goes great with corn bread or biscuits). Note that adding more beef will increase the sodium (roughly 75 mg odium for every 4 ounces of beef).
- Customize your sauce. I use a sauce akin to my my barbecue sauce, but if you have a favorite low sodium sauce feel free to sub that in for the sauce in the recipe. I would estimate somewhere around a cup and a half of barbecue sauce would work. Remember to double check the sodium in your sauce; the sauce in this recipe is ~100 mg sodium total.
- Use your favorite beans. I use a mish mash of beans for this, because that is what we like. Use whichever beans you prefer, but be sure to double check the sodium content. I used the same brand of beans (Eden Foods), each can was unsalted, and yet the cannellini beans were higher in sodium than the other two.
- Make this a one-skillet meal. Choose a large oven safe skillet. Cook your beef, bacon, and onion in that skillet and then add all other ingredients directly to the pan. This way you don’t need to dirty a separate baking dish.
Cowboy Baked Beans
NUTRITIONAL SUMMARY:
112 mg sodium per serving; 500 mg potassium per serving; 161 mg phosphorus per serving
- Prep Time: 20 minutes
- Cook Time: 45 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour 5 minutes
- Yield: 8 1x
- Category: Side Dish
- Cuisine: American
Ingredients
Beans:
- 4 slices reduced-sodium bacon* ((cut into small pieces))
- 8 ounces lean ground beef
- 1 medium onion ((diced))
- 1 15 ounce can unsalted cannellini beans ((do not drain))
- 1 15 ounce can unsalted black beans ((do not drain))
- 1 15 ounce can unsalted kidney beans ((do not drain))
Sauce:
- 1 cup unsalted ketchup
- 3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
- 5 tablespoons brown sugar
- ¾ teaspoon black pepper ((or to taste))
- ¾ teaspoon onion powder
- ¾ teaspoon ground mustard
- 1 ½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Cook the bacon, ground beef, and onion in a skillet over medium heat until browned. If you are planning on baking the beans in the skillet (like me!), make sure you choose a large, oven-safe skillet. Drain off excess fat.
- Stir together the beef, bacon, and onion with the remaining ingredients (including the sauce ingredients). If you are baking the beans in the skillet, just stir everything together in the skillet. Otherwise, transfer to a 9”x13” baking dish and bake, uncovered, in the preheated oven for 45-60 minutes.
Notes
NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION – Yield: 8 servings, ¾ cup each
*The nutritional information accounts for bacon with 90 mg sodium per slice.
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 3/4 cup
- Calories: 304
- Sodium: 112
Keywords: barbecue, low sodium
Hi. Could you tell me what brand & where you find your bacon? Thanks!
Hi – we use Great Value brand (from wal mart).
With my low sodium diet, i have been craving baked beans for years, had a old recipe i perfected but super high sodium, would make for others and have one tablespoon. Tried this one this weekend and loved it, Flavor was great-I added green peppers , Sodium loving people liked it also
Thanks for sharing this
★★★★★
I’m so glad to hear that you like the recipe!
I just found your website and Facebook page today when looking for no salt bread recipe. Your recipes look and sound delicious. I have several friends that are on a low sodium diet due to bp issues or meniriers disease that I am passing along your website info. Also, I hate the taste of salt. Lol To cut the sodium down more in the baked bean recipe try using sliced pork belly. We have started cooking that up for bacon and it is wonderful. We want to try and smoke it to do other flavors. It tastes like bacon without the salt. I bought mine at the local meat locker.
I actually have some sliced pork belly on hand right now. Thanks for the tip!
Kathy you have done it again! These are DELICIOUS and I I could not tell they were low sodium. Sodium really is optional.
★★★★★
What size skillet are you using?
12”
This was delicious! I made 2 minor changes- 1) omitted the ground beef & 2) added smoked paprika for some smokiness. I think next time I’ll not add the bean liquid from two, or all cans, because we like a thicker sauce. Or, do you have another suggestion for making it thicker? Your sauce was really tasty!
★★★★★
I’ve seen recipes that use a bit of cornstarch to thicken the sauce and others where they suggest mashing up a small portion of beans and stirring them in to thicken the sauce. I haven’t tried either, but I am guessing they’d both work okay. So glad to hear that you liked them!
Love this recipe! I’ve been searching for a low sodium baked bean recipe and this one is a winner! It was delicious 😋
★★★★★
So glad you like it!
doesnt bacon..especially from wally world have alot of salt?
The reduced sodium bacon that I use has 90 mg sodium per slice. So in this recipe it ends up being 45 mg per serving. It adds a ton of flavor for what is (for us) a manageable amount of sodium.
You can also soak dried beans, of which there are many varieties; the night before and use them for the dish. Much cheaper and better than canned beans. And you don’t have to worry about any sodium.
Here are the changes I made after a few attempts I have it down perfectly to what I like.
I use 16 oz of extra lean ground beef. I do not drain the meet. I DO drain the beans, otherwise it ends up too soupy. I can only find reduced sodium ketchup, my store doesn’t carry no salt ketchup. I cover with a sprinkling of extra sharp cheddar before popping in the oven. I make up your recipe for buttery flakey biscuits and put them on top of the beans, it all bakes in the oven at the biscuit temperature for twenty minutes.
I am trying to reduce my sodium intake cuz my cardiologist says so. I made the recipe with bison instead of beef. It is magnificent. I do have a question. I have an App called Lose It! that allows me to add the ingredients from the website, so I don’t have to manually add all the information. I’ve checked and re-checked and the app tells me that one serving is550 mg of sodium/serving. None of the other nutritional is exactly the same as you indicate, but they are all very close to your numbers. I don’t really expect you to know why this occurred but am curious to know if anyone else may have had this issue.
Thanks for your time
★★★★★
Interesting! I am wondering if Lose It was using nutritional data for low sodium beans instead of the no salt added beans that the recipe calls for? In one can of no salt added beans, there’s about 35mg sodium and in one can of low sodium beans, there’s 630-770, depending on brand. This may account for the big difference if Lose It was using the wrong info.
Ca. I use great northern beans instead of cannellini beans?
That should work fine.