Give Canned Baked Beans A Smokier Flavor On Your Grill

Baked beans are a barbecue staple, but they're also a great side dish any day of the week. One thing that makes them so delicious is the variety of ways you can spice them up using different cooking methods and extra ingredients. Baked beans with root beer, anyone? However, one trick that we're really salivating over involves imparting baked beans with a rich, smoky flavor using a grill. You will need a smoker box for a gas grill, but charcoal grills only require wood chips. 

The key to smoking baked beans on the grill is wood, but there are many types of wood for smoking you can choose depending on the flavor you want to impart. Some of the most commonly used are apple, hickory, maple, pecan, and mesquite. However, these are far from the only woods you can choose from. For baked beans, we'd recommend either hickory, which has a smoky bacon-like flavor, maple, which is a bit sweet, or pecan, which is slightly sweet and nutty. Ultimately, the wood you use will depend on the flavors you want to highlight in your beans. 

When smoking your baked beans, keep them in a safe container, like a cast iron pan or aluminum baking pan; the disposable ones will work just fine. Make sure not to cover them with anything, as this will prevent the smoke from being able to infuse flavor thoroughly. Once the beans are on the grill with your wood chips, close the lid and let them smoke for around an hour before checking them. Optimally, you should let your beans smoke for two hours. When ready to serve, they'll have thickened up with a slight crust around the edges and a heavenly smoky scent. 

If you don't have a grill or otherwise can't use yours, you don't have to miss out on delicious smoky baked beans. There are a few other ways you can give your beans a smoky flavor, and while they won't taste exactly like they would on the grill, they'll still leave you wanting seconds (and thirds). 

One way you can easily add a smoked flavor to homemade or canned baked beans is by using liquid smoke. For a 16-ounce can of beans, just ¼ of a tablespoon of liquid smoke is enough to give you a ton of depth. Remember, liquid smoke can be incredibly potent, and less is always more when using it! You can use smoked bacon to provide a smoky flavor or seasonings like smoked paprika and smoked salt.

Now, if you want to kick things up a notch, you can use a smoking gun, like the Homia Smoking Gun Wood Smoke Infuser. These rather bizarre-looking kitchen tools do as their name suggests: They add smoke to things. Every smoking gun has a burn chamber where you add wood chips that are ignited to produce smoke. This smoke is pushed through the gun's long hose and towards any food you want smoked, in this case, baked beans. Cover your beans with plastic wrap or tin foil when using a smoking gun, and insert the hose so the smoke gets trapped. Alternatively, you can use a specialized cloche designed for smoking gun hoses to contain the smoke. Either way, this is one method of getting an authentic smoky flavor into your baked beans, even if you can't use a grill!