Chipotle Baked Beans – Slow Cooker

I had this recipe for slow cooker baked beans in my stack of ” recipes to try” for quite some time and I finally got around to trying it.  The results were amazing! You won’t believe what liquid is used to cook these beans in….

 But first I have to share my new kitchen toy! Remember a few weeks back when I told you my slow cooker went wacky and was boiling everything to death? I asked for recommendations for your favorite slow cooker. Sue responded and gave me the heads up that Cooks Illustrated rated the Premier Edition Crock Pot brand slow cooker, Model SCVT650-PS with Touchscreen as their top pick. It has a 3 year warranty and a 6.5 qt oval removable stoneware crock. I had a Macy’s gift card that I wanted to use and they didn’t stock this appliance in the local store so I ordered it from their website. Then I waited with great anticipation for UPS to arrive!

Many days I heard the distinctive sound of the UPS truck coming down my street and driving right on by, until finally one day it stopped at my house! Don’t you just adore your UPS delivery person? It’s so much fun to get a package delivered to your door – especially when its a fun new toy to play with. Ha ha! It’s all shiny and new! I have only used it once but it will be getting a good work out in the months to come.

Now back to those beans I was telling you about. They turned out amazing – but of course you already knew that or I wouldn’t be posting about them. I found the basic recipe on the Dr Fuhrman message board for cooking the beans in a slow cooker. It was posted by Barb who apparently no longer posts on the board. Everyone raved about how delicious this recipe was so I had to give it a try. These baked beans have no cholesterol – 22 g of fiber and 14 g of protein! They are so filling. The secret ingredient used to cook these beans…

None other than Carrot Juice! It sounds really strange but let me tell you that cooking the beans in the carrot juice (or using it in soups) causes something magical to happen. If you have a juicer you can make your own carrot juice but I don’t want to go to that much work so I buy carrot juice at Costco. It comes in a pack of three and I also use it in a lot of soup recipes instead of vegetable broth. Sam’s club here sells carrot juice as well as Trader Joe’s – in single bottles, health food stores, grocery stores and Whole Foods. It adds a ton of flavor not to mention all the nutrients it packs!

The carrot juice offers a note of sweetness to the beans and they soak it all up as they cook – it also gives them this nice baked bean color. The beans were very tasty as is but I had to try and recreate one of my old favorite sugar laden, baked bean recipes for a chipotle baked beans and the results were fantastic. Slightly smoky – slightly sweet and down right delicious! Since the carrot juice added sweetness I didn’t need to add any other sweetener. Hubby Tom and I shared the last serving of these today.  I will be making these again and again! I think they would freeze well but we didn’t have any leftover for the freezer. You just won’t know how amazing this recipe is until you try it at home!

Chipotle Baked Beans – Slow Cooker

• 1 pound dried navy or great northern beans, rinsed and picked through- I used great northern since I couldn’t find navy beans
• 1 quart carrot juice
• 1 cup water
• 1 large onion, finely diced
• 1/4 cup tomato paste
• 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon granulated garlic powder
• 1 chiptole pepper in adobo sauce, seeds removed, finely minced, plus 2-3 teaspoons adobo sauce depending on how hot you want it. If the chipotle peppers are large you might only want half of one. Refrigerate the leftover chipotle peppers to use for future recipes – or you can freeze them too. Or Use: Chipotle Chili Powder – start with just 1/4 teaspoon and adjust according to your personal preference.

Combine dried beans, carrot juice water and onion in crock of slow cooker. Put the lid on and cook on high for 4-6 hours. The time will vary from slow cooker to slow cooker – some run really hot and cook faster.

During the last 30 minutes add tomato paste, vinegar, cumin, garlic powder and chipotle pepper.

  Notes: The beans taste delicious with just the first four ingredients, but during the last 30 minutes of cooking time the addition of the tomato paste and vinegar was suggested by the posters on the message board and it did add a nice baked bean flavor. However; I couldn’t stop there so I added cumin, garlic powder and chipotle pepper in adobo sauce and let it cook another 30 minutes for a total of 5 1/2 hours. Perfection!

Yield: 8 Servings

Nutritional Information

Per Serving: 171 Calories, 0.3 g Fat, 0 mg Cholesterol, 158.2 mg Sodium, 47.1 g Carbohydrates, 22.3 g Fiber, 14.1 g Protein

Recipe adapted from Barb’s Baked Beans – posted on the Dr Fuhrman message board.

Nutmeg Notes

We finally got back out on the trail over the weekend. I will post about that in a separate post as this one was already getting too long!

Hope everyone is having a fantastic week!

Happy Trails

Tami

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What are you cooking this week?

Do you have a favorite meatless slow cooker recipe? Feel Free to share a recipe link or email me the recipe.