13 October 2010 Hot dogs and beans

The most likely menu for tonight’s dinner is hot dogs and beans. Hardly a gourmet item on any restaurant’s menu, still last meal I had on my first trip to Boston was an excellent and very satisfying plate of hot dogs and baked beans at Durgin Park. There were lots of other items on the menu that day that I’d have enjoyed eating. The beans and franks were the only one I could afford.

Early on, small cans of “beanie-weenies’ wound up any many backpacks so that young Boy Scouts who had yet to master the art of campfire cooking might eat them directly from the can. Once the youngsters learned to manage camp cooking on a real fire the cans could provide a hot meal, hopefully not containing too much ash. It helped, of course, if the cook first opened the can before placing it into or on the fire. I’ve seen more than one can of beans and franks explode because the “cook” failed to open the can. In several instances, the offender was an adult leader who should have known better.

The commercial cans of beanie-weenies were marketed by Van Camps, easily my least favorite source of “pork and beans” or baked beans. The included “sauce” is too thin and lacking in seasoning. Bush’s many offerings are little better. The Heinz beans made for the British market are so poorly flavored as to not be edible by anyone who can taste at all. Once in a very great while my mother would spend several hours making real baked beans – usually for a potluck dinner involving Boy Scouting. It was probably my favorite of all the things she cooked in those days. Starting with navy beans rather than “pork and beans” as most family recipes began made a big difference in taste. So did the lack of a soupy nature indicating that the cook had merely emptied a can or two into a casserole and waved bacon over the dish. I truly dislike soupy “baked beans.”

We really don’t want to delve into the origin and composition of most frankfurters used to make hot dogs and beans. I’ve always avoided any sausage containing chicken. I still do.

Of course, so simple but solidly nourishing a meal has military applications. The Vietnam era “beans, lima with ham” had no real fan club. They were widely known as “ham and mothers.” I found them palatable with enough Heinz 57 sauce &/or Tabasco sauce.

Since I never carried them on Scout events as an adult leader, and avoided any communal servings – the one exception won me a horrible bout of food poisoning – my next meal of beans and franks, ignoring Durgin Park, was shortly after I moved in with Gloria. Gloria grew up in New England, made the dish with Hebrew National hot dogs and B&M baked beans. It tasted as much like beans baked overnight in a hole beneath a fire as a commercial product can. The dish rapidly became a staple in our early life as a couple.

The new has worn off the dish now. The thrill of rediscovering an old culinary friend has abated. But we still fix hot dogs and beans once or twice a month. We’ve changed from Hebrew National to Nathan’s hot dogs – less salt for two hypertensives. I sometimes add bratwurst to the mix just for the variation in flavor and texture. We make every effort to let the liquid from the can of beans reduce and thicken into a real sauce. We don’t truly bake the beans but we make them believe we have.

It doesn’t take a lot of skill to fix this dish if one can cook and has good ingredients to begin with. With bad ingredients, no amount of skill can rescue the dish. Americans have become used to poorly flavored, badly seasoned, poorly-prepared food for the masses. Discounting picky children much of the populace will eat anything set before them if they are allowed to salt it and have soft drinks or beer with it.

Given the miserable nature of the sauce in what Americans accept as “baked beans,” what Gloria and/or I produce in half an hour eclipses 99% of the hot dogs and “baked beans” that make it to the table on any given night in the continental U.S.