Home Made Pork and Beans

Who else is frustrated when they crack open a can of pork and beans and see only a small sliver of pork fat amidst all the beans? Ridiculous right?

I wanted to finally set things right by making my own home made pork and beans, and jam it with a ton load of pork, with a big dose of smoked bacon. REVENGE.

Here are my ingredients:

Two 400 gram cans of cooked beans (I used pinto beans)
1/2 kilo pork liempo, sliced into bite size pieces
200 grams smoked bacon, cut into 1 inch strips
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon molasses
1 cup tomato ketchup
1 tsp mustard
3 cups water
1 tsp ground black pepper

The first thing to do is put the bacon in a deep pot on high heat and let it sweat out its oil. If the oil isn't enough, add just a little bit more and fry until the bacon for a couple of minutes. Add the pork and stir for another few minutes.

Add the sugar, ketchup, molasses, mustard, black pepper, beans and water. Stir until everything is properly mixed and then bring to a boil. Once it's boiling, bring the heat down to as low as it goes until it's just barely bubbling. Cover, and let simmer this way for the next 3 hours. Longer if you like.

I cook it that long because I want everything to be almost falling apart. It will probably already be fine after 2 and a half hours, but no, I want the pork to be incredibly soft.

Notice I no longer added salt. That's because the bacon already brought in a lot of sodium, but if your taste buds call for more salt after tasting it, then by all means.

I also used canned cooked beans because raw beans are really so difficult to soften up. It takes overnight dunking in water and a few more hours of boiling... I thought the cooked can beans would do the job just fine.

It turned out great! Everyone loved it! Me too!