Canned Baked Beans

Put dried beans in a pot. Add 1 ½ litres (6 cups) of water. Boil 2 minutes, remove from heat and let stand for an hour, covered.

Make your sauce flavouring mixture by mixing together everything from onion down to Kitchen Bouquet (if using) in a large microwave-safe bowl or jug; set aside.

Drain the beans, discarding the soaking water.

Put beans in a large pot, add 2 bay leaves, cover with 2 to 5 cm (1 to 2 inches) of water, bring to a full boil, boil for a minute or two, then turn off the heat. Don't boil much longer or you will end up with mooshy beans at the end of everything.

Drain the beans in a way that will preserve the water this time. (See suggestions in notes.) Discard the 2 bay leaves.

Take 750 ml (3 cups / 24 oz ) of that reserved water. Add it to the sauce flavouring mixture you had set aside, cover that bowl or large jug and zap in microwave for 5 minutes to make a sauce.

Take the sauce out of the microwave, stir (mind the surge). Set aside.

The headspace on this recipe is 3 cm (1 inch) per jar. Bearing that in mind and taking that into account, fill each heated jar (minus that reserved headspace in your mind) ¾ full of plain beans.

Fill up the remaining ¼ of each jar with sauce, leaving still the 3 cm (1 inch) headspace.

At this point, the USDA notes that you may “add a ¾-inch (2 cm) cube of [raw presumably] pork, ham, or [raw] bacon to each jar, if desired.”

Add additional water to jars from the reserved bean stock if you run short on sauce.

Debubble, then top up with a bit more sauce or bean stock as needed to maintain the 2 cm (1 inch) headspace.

So to recap, a jar will 3 cm (1 inch) blank headspace at the top. Of the remaining jar space below that, ¾ of that space will be plain beans, then ¼ plain sauce.

Debubble, adjust headspace.

Wipe jar rims.

Put lids on.

Processing pressure: 10 lbs (69 kPa) weighted gauge, 11 lbs (76 kpa) dial gauge (adjust pressure for your altitude when over 300 metres / 1000 feet)

Processing time: quarter-litre (½ US pint / 250 ml) OR half-litre (1 US pint): 65 minutes. 1 litre (1 US quart): 75 minutes.