Bean Soup and Baked Beans

Categories: Iii Camping

Look over one quart of dried beans, take out all bits of foreign matter

and injured beans; then wash the beans in several waters and put them to

soak overnight in fresh water. Next morning scald 1-1/2 pounds salt

pork, scrape it well, rinse, and with 1 teaspoonful of dried onion or

half of a fresh one, put on to boil with the beans in cold water. Cook

slowly for several hours. When the water boils low, add more boiling

water and boil until the beans are soft.



To make soup, dip out a heaping cupful of the boiled beans, mash them to

a paste, then pour the liquid from the boiled beans over the paste and

stir until well mixed; if too thin add more beans; if too thick add hot

water until of the right consistency, place the soup over the fire to

reheat, and serve very hot. To bake beans, remove the pork from the

drained, partially cooked beans, score it across the top and replace it

in the pot in midst of and extending a trifle above the surface of the

beans, add 1 cup of hot water and securely cover the top of the pot with

a lid or some substitute. Sink the pot well into the glowing coals and

shovel hot coals over all. Add more hot water from time to time if

necessary.



Beans cooked in a bean hole rival those baked in other ways. Dig the

hole about 1-1/2 feet deep and wide, build a fire in it, and keep it

burning briskly for hours; the oven hole must be _hot_. When the beans

are ready, rake the fire out of the hole; then sink the pot down into

the hole and cover well with hot coals and ashes, placing them all over

the sides and top of the pot. Over these shovel a thick layer of earth,

protecting the top with grass sod or thick blanket of leaves and bark,

that rain may not penetrate to the oven. Let the beans bake all night.