I’m so excited for summer I can barely stand it. Backyard grilling, late evening walks, laying out in the sun….I love it all! As soon as the weather goes above 70 degrees and the first couple of ears of corn show up in the market, I’m already pretending it’s July and firing up the grill. So in the spirit of welcoming summer, I’ve got a quick and easy baked beans recipe for you today, and I’ll even throw in a “how to grill corn” tutorial as a bonus. And if you look carefully in the background of the baked beans photo above, you’ll see tomorrow’s recipe – a Carolina pulled “pork” sandwich you are seriously not going to believe.
So – baked beans. I cheated a little and used canned beans, but I encourage you to use dried if you have the time to boil them until they are soft first. Heat up about half an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic in a skillet until they are nice and browned, and while you do that you can mix together your sauce. It’s made from fairly standard pantry ingredients (maple syrup, vinegar, soy sauce, etc.) and if you want to make it really interesting a bit of tamarind paste (but you can skip it if you don’t have it).
Then just pour your sauce over your beans and bake them for about half an hour. That’s all there is to it! So much less fat and sugar than the standard recipe, which you know makes me happy.
For corn on the cob, I can’t really call this a “recipe” since it’s basically “Put corn on the grill and then eat it,” but did you know how easy it is to make super sweet, crunchy, delicious corn on the cob? You really can just throw it on the grill with the husk still on, let it heat over medium high heat for maybe 4-6 minutes per side (I treat it like it has four sides) until the husks are starting to get pretty blackened.
Then just peel off the husks and enjoy! You can always add a sprinkle of salt if you want, but I find it rarely needs anything.
So, who else is super excited for summer? It’s so close I can taste it!
BBQ Baked Beans (and grilled corn)
Ingredients
Instructions
I would never think that corn can be grilled! Awesome idea!
oooo you must have been receiving my waves here lol ..was recently wanting to chat with you about making these – and here they are! 🙂 can’t wait to make – looks great and i love baked beans 🙂
Looks delicious – I will make this today! Love baked beans….and your blog is amazing…..thanks for sharing all your great ideas!
This is awesom! Im eating BBQ souce for the first time! Thank you so much for this wonderful recipe! 🙂
Yum — two of my fave BBQ foods!! Right now we are enjoying fresh local asparagus. I love it grilled on the BBQ or roasted in the oven. I love this time of year!!
Even though it is going to feel like winter tonight, I am so excited for summer. Well, I am excited to cook just about every meal on the grill – not so much for the high temps!
Yum! I’m excited for summer too. We finally found ourselves a patio set which I couldn’t be more thrilled about! Summer is just around the corner… finally!