Baked beans seem like something that should be vegetarian friendly without much effort, but to buy them in the store takes effort. A few brands have one variety of vegetarian baked beans, but most have bacon or pork or some other part of a pig.

A little experimenting will give you the exact flavor you want, but using a crock pot and cooking them slowly will give almost any attempt amazing results.

You’re going to need a crock pot for this recipe, but I’m sure stove top will work if you have to.

You can sub an appropriate amount of canned beans instead of cooking the dried beans, but 79 cents worth of dried beans will probably mean about four or five bucks worth of the cans.

To prepare the beans, ignore the instructions on the bag. They have always steered me way wrong and I end up with beans that are too hard to enjoy.

Boil about eight or nine cups of water in a large pot. Rinse the beans and put them in the boiling water for a few minutes.

Remove from the heat and let sit for an hour.

Place back over low heat and allow them to simmer for another hour or two, until the beans are soft.

Dice the onion and peppers fine. I like red onion in this recipe, but any onion will do.

The hot peppers are also a variable, I like using two different types of peppers to create a slightly more complex flavor.

Drain the beans once they are soft enough, set aside about a cup and a half of the liquid.

Put the beans, onions and peppers into the crock pot.

In a separate bowl, mix the bean water with the molasses, sriracha, sugar, garlic, salt and mustard.

If you’re not familiar with sriracha, it is a Chinese hot sauce that has more flavor than most other hot sauces, but still has the spicy kick. It has become my choice for hot sauce in most recipes, but if you don’t have it, use regular hot sauce. If you haven’t tried sriracha, go buy it on your next trip to the supermarket.

Mix these up and pour into the crock pot and stir into the beans.

Cut the butter or margarine into thin pats and place on top when you are done.

Put the lid on and cook on low heat for 8-10 hours.

Stir it up and enjoy.

This recipe is easy to make vegan by just using Earth Balance sticks or another dairy free margarine instead of butter. I recommend the Earth Balance because it is the most butter-like vegan margarine out there.

Ingredients:

1 lb dried beans (pinto, kidney, great northern, whatever)

1 small onion or ½ large onion, chopped fine

2 small hot peppers

1/3 cup molasses

1 tbsp sriracha (optional)

2 tbsp brown sugar

2 tsp salt

½ tsp dried mustard

1 clove garlic, minced

1 stick butter or margarine