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Homemade Slow Cooker Baked Beans are a tasty and inexpensive menu addition for your next barbecue, dinner, or holiday meal. They’re infused with plenty of bacon and molasses, and they’re easy to make right in a crockpot.
Meggan’s notes
I love the convenience of slow cookers, but especially when it comes to recipes for dried beans. Unless you’re using an Instant Pot, beans can take a while. I like to adjust my expectations and just plan on them taking all day long.
Thanks for my culinary training, I know all about balancing flavors, even in a slow cooker. Here, we balance salty bacon with a sweet sauce made from brown sugar, molasses, and ketchup. For texture, add crunchy onions and celery. They soften in the slow cooker, but they still have a different texture from the beans.
Serve these beans on the side of your next barbecue menu, fried chicken, or baked ham. I’ve got all my best menu-planning ideas below.
Baked Beans Ingredients
At a Glance: Here is a quick snapshot of what ingredients are in this recipe.
Please see the recipe card below for specific quantities.
- Navy beans: Baked beans are traditionally made with navy beans, but you can use small white beans, great northern beans, or cannellini beans. To soak dried beans overnight, pick through and sort 1 pound of dried navy beans. In a large bowl, add beans and enough water to cover by 1 inch. Soak at least 8 hours overnight. Drain and discard soaking liquid.
- Ketchup, brown sugar, and molasses: To make the sauce for the beans.
- Bacon: The salty flavor balances out the sweetness of the sauce, and the bacon adds a texture contrast with the beans.
- Onions and celery: For crunch and flavor.
- Bay leaf
- Salt and pepper: Adding salt too early can prevent beans from softening, so season your beans to taste after they’re done cooking. The bacon is salty, of course, so you might not need any additional salt.
How to make Baked Beans in a Crockpot
- Drain soaked beans well. In small bowl, whisk together ketchup, brown sugar, and molasses.
- In the bottom of a slow cooker, add beans, water, bacon, celery, onion, and bay leaf. Add sauce and stir to combine.
- Cover and cook on HIGH for 4 to 6 hours or LOW for 8 to 10 hours, or until beans are tender. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Crock Pot Baked Beans Tips and Variations
- Yield: This Slow Cooker Baked Beans recipe makes 12 generous side dish servings.
- Quick-soak beans: Add 1 pound of rinsed beans to a large saucepan and cover with 3 inches of water. Bring to a boil. Boil rapidly for 5 minutes, then remove from heat, cover, and let stand for 1 hour.
- Oven-baked beans: Adjust an oven rack to the lower-middle position and heat oven to 300 degrees. In the bottom of a Dutch oven or large saucepan, add all ingredients except salt and pepper and stir to combine. Cover and bake, stirring every hour, until the beans are tender, about 4 to 5 hours.
- Ham bone: Instead of bacon, add a meaty ham bone and 1 cup chopped leftover ham to your slow cooker. Remove the ham bone before serving.
- Fun flavors: For a different flavor, add 4 cloves minced garlic or 1 tablespoon brown mustard to the slow cooker. Or, substitute half of the ketchup for your favorite barbecue sauce.
Crockpot Baked Beans FAQs
Navy beans are the standard choice for baked beans are traditionally made with navy beans, but you can use small white beans or large great northern beans.
There are a few ways to thicken baked beans. The easiest way is to mash some of the beans into a paste and stir them into the rest. You can also cook off some of the water (either by removing the lid and cooking the beans in the slow cooker on high, or transferring to a pot on the stove and cooking off liquid that way). You could also add a cornstarch slurry (cornstarch whisked with water) and stir that in. A roux, made with fat and flour (such as butter and flour), can work too.
Avoid adding salt too early in the cooking process. Salt can prevent beans from softening, so it’s best to add it at the end after the beans are fully cooked.
Be sure to always soak your beans. If you add them to the slow cooker dry and unsoaked, they may not cook in the appropriate time or with the correct amount of liquid listed in the recipe.
Use the correct ratio of beans to liquid. If you don’t have enough water, the beans cannot absorb enough liquid to soften and plump up.
Because this recipe requires you to pre-soak the beans, they can successfully be cooked in the slow cooker at either high or low temperature.
Kidney beans contain phytohemagglutinin, a type of lectin that is very toxic at high levels. To use dried kidney beans in recipes, you MUST pre-soak dried kidney beans AND hold them at boiling point (212 degrees Fahrenheit) for at least 10 minutes.
This means you should never cook kidney beans in a slow cooker. You won’t know for sure if the slow cooker reached 212 degrees and held it for 10 minutes. Better to be safe than sorry!
Storing Slow Cooker Baked Beans
Store baked beans covered in the refrigerator for up to 4 days.
Baked beans can be made up to 3 days in advance. Reheat over the stove until an internal thermometer reaches 165 degrees.
What to Serve with Baked Beans
Baked beans fit many menus and occasions, and they add a hearty side-dish wherever they’re served.
- Backyard barbecue: On the side of bacon cheeseburgers, grilled tri-tip, bratwurst, grilled BBQ chicken, along with potato salad, pasta salad, pickles, fruit salad, and Cowboy Caviar.
- Fried chicken: Serve beans on the side of your next bucket of homemade fried chicken along with mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, roasted green beans, coleslaw, buttermilk biscuits or cornbread, and mac and cheese.
- Ham: Baked beans are epic on the side of a glazed ham, baked ham, or Dr. Pepper Ham. Serve with cheesy potato casserole, roasted asparagus, and soft yeast dinner rolls.
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Crockpot Baked Beans Recipe
Ingredients
Instructions
- Drain beans well. In small bowl, whisk together ketchup, brown sugar, and molasses. In the bottom of a slow cooker, add beans, water, bacon, celery, onion, and bay leaf. Add sauce and stir to combine.
- Cover and cook on HIGH for 4 to 6 hours or LOW for 8 to 10 hours, or until beans are tender. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Recipe Video
Notes
- Navy beans: Baked beans are traditionally made with navy beans, but you can use small white beans or great northern beans. To soak dried beans overnight, pick through and sort 1 pound of dried navy beans beans. In a large bowl, add beans and enough water to cover by 1 inch. Soak at least 8 hours overnight. Drain and discard soaking liquid.
- Molasses: This robust, sweet syrup accentuates the sweetness of the brown sugar (brown sugar is a mixture of cane sugar and molasses). I love the flavor from using brown sugar and molasses in a 2:1 ratio.
- Yield: This Slow Cooker Baked Beans recipe makes 12 generous side dish servings.
- Storage: Store leftovers covered in the refrigerator for up to 4 days.
Hi, do you add salt to beans on slow cooker recipe for 8 hour soak, and what size slow cooker does this fit. I have a few different sizes and would like to use the best choice.
Hi Cris, there are a lot of divided opinions on soaking beans and salt use so you don’t have to worry too much. I typically soak the beans in salted water, but a lot of better cooks than me just use plain water. I used to discard the soaking water and put fresh in the crock pot, but that isn’t really necessary either (you can use the soaking liquid in your recipe, salted or not). I make these in a 6 1/2 quart slow cooker and it might be half-full or so. You could definitely go with a smaller one. I hope this is helpful. I realize I didn’t give you any very strong answers, but the truth is this recipe is pretty forgiving! Good luck and please let me know if you have any more questions.
Hi Meggan!
Baked beans are immensely popular over here in the UK – in fact, the husband and I now have a ‘beans Thursday’ (don’t laugh!) when we just have baked beans on toast so we don’t have to make a lot of effort for dinner!
I’ve always wanted to try making my own, but never seem to get around to it. Thanks for the recipe, and for the suggestion to make them in the slow cooker!
Hi Helen! I think baked beans on toast is basically the best idea ever. So delicious and satisfying. You have baked beans for breakfast sometimes too, right? You crazy brits! 🙂 Always lovely to hear from you! Hope you’re well.
I make lots of beans and always have them on hand. Older beans do take longer to cook – but they will cook. Adding salt to soak water is argumentative. Test Kitchen adds it, others do not. What’s nice about adding it at the end, is you can season it how you like it. It makes no difference to the finished flavor. Test Kitchen also adds a dab of baking soda to the soak water. Since I don’t pre-soak or discard my water, If I remember, I add it to my cook water.
Something I found online regarding beans and gas production: ” nutritionfacts.org › Ask the Doctor Nov 8, 2012 – Answer: Yes indeed, research dating back more than 25 years (“Effect of Processing on Flatus-Producing Factors in Legumes“) found that adding baking soda to the soak water of dried beans before cooking (about 1/16 teaspoon per quart) significantly decreases the content of the raffinose family of sugars.” Those indigestible sugars are what makes the beans “noisy.” Don’t add too much soda for the obvious reason. However, to reduce the intestinal side-effects of beans, eat them more often so your gut bacteria can adjust. That’s about all I know about beans. Further, pairing beans with rice forms a complimentary protein so your body actually digests them better. :-))
I LOVE how versatile and filling beans are. And yours include bacon? YUM! Love that tip from Dave!
I decided to make my mother’s baked beans for neighborhood night out in our new neighborhood. Due to the move, I could not find my recipe, so on a lark, I googled Hill’s Baked Beans. To my surprise there was Culinary Hill in the first few matches! I am using the traditional bean pot, and plan to put them in the oven before I leave for work in the morning. Beans are soaking now. Thank you to my wonderful niece for sharing our family beans recipe!
Hi Aunt Bonnie, what a wonderful surprise! 🙂 The photos for this recipe are pretty bad and need to be reshot, but the recipe is solid gold as you know. I’m glad you made them and so happy you are using the traditional bean pot. Grandpa Jack’s pancake mix is on the blog too! Thanks for stopping by the blog. 🙂 Take care!! XOXO
I’m definitely going to try this but my only question is I always was told not to add salt to beans while soaking or at the start that it makes them tough, is this a problem or does the salt help keep the beans from turning to mush?
Hi Jerry, that is really interesting. I have always added beans to my water when soaking beans, I think America’s Test Kitchen/Cook’s Illustrated teaches that. I have never had a problem with it making beans tough. I do the same thing for my slow cooker black beans which soak in salted water for 8 hours or so before going in the slow cooker. I don’t know if the salt prevents them from turning to mush or if it just adds flavor. I’ll have to read up on this! Thanks for your question. I’m wondering myself now.
I use my crock pot for all the different beans I cook and lately cooking them on low for 8 hours and they are always done. Soft but not mushy.
Do you think this would be tasty with pinto beans as well? I might attempt this for 4th of July picnic and have a 5 lb bag of pinto beans.
Hi Patty, I think these would work fine with Pinto beans! Been meaning to try that myself, actually. I always have dried pintos on hand too. Happy 4th! 🙂
I did make these today with pinto beans and they were good. I don’t know if it was the bean type or the age of the beans or the fact that I doubled the recipe but after 6 hours on high the beans were still hard. Ended up cooking them more like 11 hours! Good thing I cooked them a day early because they would not have been ready for my afternoon BBQ if it were today. Thanks!
Hi Patty, I do think the age of the beans has something to do with the long cooking time (more so than the doubling of the recipe). I don’t remember the info exactly, but I read about that one time (probably in an America’s Test Kitchen cookbook) so I’ll have to see if I can find that. Glad it worked out, good job planning ahead! 🙂 Also thanks for the update on the pintos.
How do you adjust this recipe to make black beans for a chipotle copy cat recipe?
Hi Mari, I haven’t investigated the exact Chipotle recipe (yet). The main thing is, you need to take out the bacon. Beyond that, I’ll have to look up all the ingredients they use to make sure what I have matches. But, they already taste pretty close without the bacon. Good luck!
Is the bacon precooked, or raw?
The bacon goes in raw. It definitely cooks after being in the slow cooker for so long, and the resulting bacon is soft and chewy. You could certainly precook the bacon. That would mean less bacon fat in the final dish and the bacon could be crispier, if that’s how you like it. I thought about doing it that way myself and might try it at some point.
You will definitely lose something without the bacon fat. I have had beans made with precooked and added raw. Better raw.
Awesome, thanks for that Adam! I wouldn’t want to use ANY of the bacon fat. 😉