Food Friday: Instant Pot Baked Beans Experiment

Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose when you do food experiments.  I will tell you up front that this was more or less a lose!

Yesterday I saw a YouTube video with a woman making baked beans in her electric pressure cooker.  Since we have an Instant Pot and since Dear One loves baked beans, I thought I would give it a try.   Not the best idea to do it this way but I will tell you what I did, and then tell you what I did to rectify things.

Baked beans.  Instant Pot experiment.

2 1/4 cups white beans
6 cups water
1 teaspoon each granulated onions and granulated garlic
3 Tablespoons dried onions--could use a small to medium onion, finely diced
2 tablespoons canola oil--this keeps the beans from foaming up and annoying the pressure valve
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1/2 cup molasses
1/2 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup catsup
Salt pork
NO SALT ADDED.  There is enough in the salt pork, and if any eaters need more, they can just shake it on at the table.  If they eat at the table...

Put all these ingredients into the Instant Pot, and stir them well.  Set the pot to sealing and 40 minutes on the bean cycle, which is low pressure.

After 40 minutes I checked the beans.  There was a LOT of liquid in the pot. The broth tasted pretty good but had no depth to it.  The beans were not cooked. 

SO---I put the cover back on, set it to sealing and clicked the Manual button which is normally at high pressure then set the timer for 40 more minutes.  The beans were cooked but still firm, not like the mushy baked beans we make in the crock pot, and which, apparently, Dear One prefers.  They were not crunchy, either, just not the right texture yet.

Well, I did not have any more time as there were several necessary errands before attending classes, so I put the cover BACK ON and set them to cook again on Manual for ANOTHER 40 minutes.  I told Dear One to just leave it alone until the timer was done and the pressure valve released. Then I left.

After 10 PM I returned home.  The cover was off the pot.  There were a few beans in the bottom of the pot and a large amount of broth left.  The beans were VERY nicely cooked, if I do say so myself.  And they tasted wonderful, as did the broth.  Well, how could they fail with molasses AND Vermont maple syrup as sweeteners?!

Next time I will soak the beans overnight before putting them in to cook.  I suspect that they will then cook just fine on the first 40-minute cycle, though I will go directly to the high pressure cycle and not the low pressure cycle.