Bring A Meaty Flavor To Baked Beans With Chopped Bologna

Canned baked beans get their sweet and savory taste from a number of powerhouse ingredients that bring maximum umami flavor, from blackstrap molasses to ham hocks. If you're making the homemade version, these ingredients still apply, and bacon and other smoked pork products are a common add-in for texture and rich, salty flavor. But for another meaty add-on, try subbing in chopped bologna.

Bologna is a type of meat that's made from a mixture of pork, turkey, chicken, and beef. While you might see it as a packaged lunch meat, it can also be bought from the deli counter and sliced as desired. For baked beans, using thick-sliced deli bologna with a texture more similar to bacon is likely the better option. The amount of bologna you add is up to you, but for a little crunch and caramelized flavor, crisp the bologna in a pan before adding it to the dish. You can still add plenty of other ingredients to the beans, such as onions and brown sugar, that will pair well with this addition.

Besides adding a flavor twist, one big perk of using bologna in your baked beans is the lower cost. Since it's usually made with meat byproducts — similar to hot dogs — a higher-quality cut of bologna will still cost less than other to-shelf types of meat, like premium bacon or smoked ham, that would traditionally be added to the beans.

If you're making a standard, four-serving amount of baked beans, you'd use about half a pound of bacon. That's a good rule of measurement to follow, so consider swapping in the exact amount of bologna instead. Before toasting the bologna in a pan, carve a small "x" shape with a knife in the bologna's center, which will keep the sides from curling up. Once toasted, chop the bologna into small enough pieces so that it's similar in size to a baked bean. This is to ensure the flavors don't overpower each other. This goes for other chopped ingredients in the dish, too, like onions or peppers. Add the bologna to the recipe, and bake the beans as you normally would.