1 lb navy beans
1/2 onion, chopped
1 piece of salt pork cut into 2 pieces. Standard package size or 12 ounces
1/4 cup of sugar
1/3 cup of molasses
2 tsps salt
1 tsp dry mustard
Freshly ground pepper
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Soak beans overnight.
In the morning drain the beans while reserving the water.
Bring the reserved water to a boil, add 1 tsp of baking soda and the beans. It will froth up and you should scrape out the white foam. Note: Simmer about 20 minutes or until just tender as the beans require this advance preparation before the long bake. This tip was not originally in Sally White's recipe.
Drain and reserve the bean water.
Add molasses, sugar, salt, mustard powder to 2 cups of the reserved bean water. Save the remainder for topping up the beans if and or when the surface gets too dry.
Add one piece of pork in the bottom of pot
Add the beans and onion to the bean pot and stir. If the piece of pork is dislodged from bottom of pot push back to bottom.
Pour in water, molasses, etc. mixture.
The beans should be just covered. If not cover with some of the remaining reserved bean water.
Add the second piece of pork skin side up and just submerge it under the beans.
Bake at 320 for 5 hours. Beans are done when they have a rich sauce, and the beans are buttery but still intact. If sauce is too thin leave cover off the last 1/2 hour.
Beans and franks (not beans and hot dogs) were, and in some families still are, a Saturday night tradition. While mom never—or rarely ever—made these beans from scratch, we would have them quite often on Saturday nights at the lake.
On these occasions she would buy a can of beans and put them in a pot with franks until the franks were bursting. She would serve with warmed brown bread. The meal would always spark the controversy as to whether the franks should be eaten with or without buns and all the fixings.
Coming from South America we clueless kids always held out for the buns and fixings while Mom always insisted that that is not the way it is done. Sad to say, Mom was right all those years.
We also have a recipe from Memere which in terms of ingredients is identical with teh exceptions that it only calls for 1/2 lb. of pork, the sugar is brown sugar, it only has 1/4 cup of molasses and includes an entire onion. There is controversy in New England's about advance preparation of the beans. Memere has an approach that does not include soaking. Instead, she suggested:
Add beans to cold water, bring to boil, simmer for 2 minutes, remove from heat , cover and let stand for 1 hour.
Add 1 tsp salt to beans and soaking water, cover and simmer for 1 hour or until tender.
Memere also had a slightly different treatment of pork and cooking time and temperature:
Cut salt pork in half, score one half and thin slice the 2nd half.
She also put the scored half skin side down at the top of the beans and set the temperature to 300 and cooked for 5-7 hours
