Baked Beans With Ground Beef

These baked Beans with Ground Beef are cooked low and slow under bacon with my homemade BBQ seasoning and Hennessy BBQ sauce. Perfect as a main dish or side dish, a bowl of these will brighten up a dull day. The best part is that you can use canned beans and skip the hassle of soaking and boiling dry beans. Serve these with your favorite side dish for a filling meal.

Why Make This?

• Uses canned or dry beans: You can use canned beans to save time and energy instead of cooking dry beans from scratch.
• Simple ingredients: It uses simple ingredients, most of which you already have in your kitchen. 
• Saves time: Shortcuts like using BBQ sauce and canned beans help you save time.
• A hearty version of regular baked beans: This recipe tweaks regular baked beans to deliver drop-dead sumptuous results.

Ingredients Needed

Making baked beans with ground beef is easy. Here is what you’ll need to gather:

• No sugar-added bacon or any pork bacon that you prefer.
• Yellow onion: diced
• Cloves: Minced
• Ground Beef: I have used 7% fat (lean ground beef) and 15% fat ground beef. Both work. You can also use any ground meat like ground turkey.
• Cannellini beans: Drained and rinsed, with no salt added, or another prepared small white bean like navy beans. If you use dry beans, then you will need to soak them and boil them before adding them to this recipe. You can use this quick soak method to soften your dried beans.
• BBQ seasoning: this is a brown sugar-based BBQ chicken rub that I keep on hand. It works great in Pulled BBQ Chicken in the Instant Pot and this recipe. It includes things like smoked paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne pepper, and more.
• BBQ sauce: Hickory or Kansas City style works best. I have also used a bourbon BBQ sauce.
• Brown sugar
• Chicken Broth: Adding some chicken broth keeps the mixture from drying out as it cooks.
• Hennessy: If you’ve tried my Hennessy BBQ Wings then you know that Hennessy adds so much flavor to BBQ food. If you don’t have any on hand, then you can substitute another Cognac. Or, you can buy a flavored BBQ sauce like bourbon BBQ sauce from the grocery store.
• Sea salt: Since I used no salt-added beans, I kept this on hand to add to taste.

How To Make Baked Beans With Ground Beef

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Sauté 3 slices of bacon out of the package—the goal is to get some fat in the pan. In the same pan, add the onions to the bacon and sauté until translucent.
2. Add the ground meat to the pan and brown.
3. Turn the heat to medium-low, add the remaining ingredients, and stir to combine.
4. Transfer the bean and ground meat mixture to a baking dish (I used a 9 by 12 pan). Top the beans and meat with the remaining raw bacon (I line the slices up and spread them evenly with the strips). Bake uncovered in the oven for 90-100 minutes (or 1 hr 30 minutes to 1 hr 40 minutes). The sauce will thicken and reduce. The bacon will become crispy and look almost burnt in some places. 

Recipe Tips & FAQs

• Alternative for beef: You can use ground turkey
• Options apart from Hennessy: Use your favorite cola or broth

Print Pin

5 from 2 votes

Baked Beans with Ground Beef

This Baked Beans with Ground Beef is easy to make and packed with flavor. The beans are cooked low and slow under bacon with my homemade BBQ seasoning and Hennessy BBQ sauce. Perfect as a main dish or side dish.

Prep Time 5 minutes minutes

Cook Time 1 hour hour 30 minutes minutes

Total Time 1 hour hour 35 minutes minutes

Servings 16

Calories 273kcal

Ingredients

• 10 oz bacon I use no sugar-added bacon, but any bacon will work.
• 1.25 cup yellow onion diced
• 6 cloves garlic minced
• 1 lb ground beef or ground turkey (I used 7% fat and 15% fat meat and both work)
• 54 oz cannellini beans I used 4 cartons which were about 13.5 oz each, drained and rinsed, with no salt added
• 1/3 cup BBQ seasoning click to get the recipe for homemade bbq seasoning
• 3/4 cup BBQ sauce hickory or Kansas City style work best, but Bourbon BBQ sauce also tastes great, especially if you aren't using Hennessy
• 3/4 cup chicken broth low sodium
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 2 tbsp Hennessy optional
• 1/2 tsp sea salt optional, because I used no salt added beans. You can add this at the end to taste

Instructions

• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
• Sauté 3 slices of bacon out of the package, the goal is to get some fat in the pan. Remove the bacon from the pan, crumble it, and set it aside.
• In the same pan, add the onions to the bacon drippings and sauté until translucent.
• Add the ground beef to the pan and brown.
• Turn the heat to medium-low, add the remaining ingredients, and stir to combine.
• Transfer the beans and ground meat to a baking dish, I used a 9×12 pan.
• Top the beans and meat with the remaining raw bacon – I line the slices up and spread them evenly with the strips.
• Bake uncovered in the oven for 1 hr 20 minutes to 1 hr 40 minutes. The sauce will thicken and reduce the longer that it cooks. The bacon will be crisp and look almost burnt in some places.

Notes

You can check on your beans after 1 hour since some ovens cook faster. But, allowing the beans to cook in the sauce and reduce helps the beans to absorb all of the flavors. 

Nutrition

Calories: 273kcal | Carbohydrates: 28g | Protein: 13g | Fat: 13g | Saturated Fat: 5g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 1g | Monounsaturated Fat: 6g | Trans Fat: 0.4g | Cholesterol: 32mg | Sodium: 597mg | Potassium: 206mg | Fiber: 5g | Sugar: 9g | Vitamin A: 167IU | Vitamin C: 2mg | Calcium: 125mg | Iron: 5mg