Category: Side dishes

Onions on the Grill

Late July but it’s forty-five degrees and raining. It feels like snow is on the way. Even the bears have taken cover. We are huddling around a fire in front of a primitive cabin on an island in the Gulf of Alaska. For a fire pit someone long ago hauled rocks up from the shore. There is a blackened grill balanced on the rocks, and on the grill are six aluminum foil packages looking like giant Hershey’s Kisses. Chuck is roasting onions.

When we were making the list of things to buy for that fishing trip to Alaska oh so many years ago, Chuck, the camp chef, (not me) included five pounds of onions. As the new guy in the group, I asked whether five pounds might be more than we needed. The gang told me that we needed at least that many. “Chuck is a genius with onions. You’ll see.” And I did.

Here is how Chuck cooked onions on the grill on Afognak Island.

INGREDIENTS:

Onions (about 3 inches in diameter are best)
Butter
Seasoned salt

PROCEDURE:

Plan on one onion for each hungry fisherman. Cut off the tops and bottoms and peel the outer layer from each onion. Make two right angle cuts in the top of each onion; don’t cut the onion in quarters, but cut deeply enough that you can open the top of the onion about a half inch. Put about two teaspoons of butter in the opening and sprinkle with seasoned salt. Wrap the onions in aluminum foil, finishing off the wrap by twisting it into a “handle” on top. Set on the grill over moderate heat. Cook about 20 minutes.

NOTES: If you have used enough aluminum foil, you will end up with onions that look like big Hershey’s Kisses. We like onions on the grill when we have hamburgers or steaks. I put the onions over the edge of the coals about ten minutes before starting the meat and use the “handles” to rotate the onions so they cook without burning. Larger onions need to cook longer.

The bean Pot

Some people treasure a piece of furniture passed down to them by their mothers or grandmothers, a cradle or a rocking chair perhaps that they remember being lulled to sleep in when they were little. Others display a painting or a photograph of grandparents or great grandparents on their wedding day. I look at them and wonder how the solemn husband and wife ended up with so many children, and I wish that I could have known them when they were young and in love. There were a pair of these photos in our family with curved glass in oval walnut frames that one of my sisters guards today.

But my treasures are more modest. While others inherited jewelry or great estates, I inherited a bean pot. As I was growing up it appeared regularly on our supper table from October to May. In summer, Mom baked beans only for special occasions like church picnics or family reunions.

Someday my bean pot may become a valuable family heirloom, first since it belonged to my mother and second because it was not made in China. If you hold it right, you can see U.S.A. stamped under the brown glaze on the bottom.

And though it is old it works just fine. Fill it with beans and sauce, slip it into the oven and it does its job just as reliably today as it did when I was too young to chop the onion. And that’s a long time ago. I never asked my mother for her baked bean recipe. If I had she would probably have said that she did not have one, but she followed the same steps every time I watched.

Before she went to bed she rinsed and picked over about a pound of beans and left them to soak overnight. After breakfast the next morning she would boil them for an hour or so then mix them with a sauce she made in the frying pan on the stove and put them in the oven to bake slowly. When the beans were done she would raise the temperature in the oven to bake bread and rolls. Ah, heaven.

The recipe below comes close to producing baked beans like my mother used to make. My wife has a crock pot bean recipe that she thinks is better, and they are pretty good. But if I’m cooking and friends come to dinner when we’re having baked beans, I serve them from my mother’s bean pot.

INGREDIENTS:

2 cups navy beans (1 lb.)
1/3 pound bacon (3 or 4 thick slices)
1 medium onion (2 1/2 inch)
5 tablespoons molasses
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
1/2 cup ketchup
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
2 T brown sugar
2 T maple syrup

PROCEDURE:

Rinse the beans and pick out any pebbles or other debris. I like to wash the beans in a large mixing bowl and drain them in a colander a couple of times. Then soak them overnight in cold water. Drain and rinse the beans in the morning and and cover with fresh water in a large pot. Do not add salt for soaking or boiling. Simmer the beans until they are tender, approximately 1 to 1 1/4 hours. Drain the boiled beans and reserve the liquid. Put the beans back into the large mixing bowl.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. While the oven is heating, make the sauce. Chop the onion fine and cut the bacon slices into 1/2 inch pieces. In a skillet or saucepan over medium heat sauté the bacon until some of the grease has cooked out. The bacon should not be crisp. Drain all but about 2 tablespoons of the grease from the pan and add the chopped onion. Sauté until the onion is limp but not brown. Add 1 cup of the bean water, the molasses, salt, pepper, dry mustard, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar and maple syrup. Bring the mixture to a boil and pour it over the beans. Mix well and spoon the beans into the bean pot. Pour in just enough of the reserved bean water to cover the beans. Put the lid on the pot and put the pot into the preheated oven.

Bake for 3 to 4 hours until the beans are tender. About halfway through cooking,, stir the beans, and add more liquid if necessary to prevent them from getting too dry. Half an hour before the beans are done, you can remove the lid to allow the sauce to thicken slightly

Taste and add more maple syrup if you would like the beans a little sweeter.