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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.
Excited to make this recipe! Quick Q; Can I fry the bacon first before adding to crockpot?
Hi Deb! The bacon goes in raw. I prefer adding in the bacon raw so it becomes soft and chewy. You could certainly fry the bacon first, but that would mean less bacon fat in the final dish and the bacon would be crispier, if that’s how you like it. Either way, I hope you love them! Please write back and let me know what you chose, and how they turned out! – Meggan
Worked out Perfectly!!!