Give Canned Baked Beans A Sweet, Delicious Upgrade With This Jarred Ingredient (Hint: It's Not Honey)

We're no strangers to upgrading canned baked beans with pantry staples — catch us folding green chiles into our beans for some pleasant heat — so, when we want to give our favorite BBQ side a complex sweetness that's so much more interesting than honey, we reach for molasses. Molasses is a byproduct of the sugarcane or sugar beet refining process when juice from cane or beets is boiled down. Depending on how many times the runoff is boiled, you get either light (fancy), dark, or blackstrap molasses.

Molasses makes our list of pantry staples that improve canned baked beans because it's tremendously accessible, yet also incredibly potent. Many home bakers already have molasses in the cupboard (if not, you can easily find it at most groceries), and adding it to baked beans couldn't be easier, as you just stir it in and heat the beans up! The benefits of molasses are twofold: not only do you get the bittersweet, smoky flavor of the syrup, but you also get the viscous texture, which can make your beans delightfully thick and sticky.

You don't need much molasses, either — perhaps just ¼ cup of molasses per two cans of beans in your pot — and you might find that a little goes a long way. Some home cooks only use light molasses, preferring the sweetness, while others will gravitate towards bitter notes in blackstrap molasses that others don't really enjoy. We recommend that you sample your molasses before putting it in your beans to ensure you like the flavor first.

Even if you haven't cooked with molasses before, there's a strong chance that you might already have a taste for its distinct savor, as molasses and white sugar are the two ingredients you need for making brown sugar at home. Brown sugar is a frequent player in baked beans, but molasses by itself lends a distinct flavor that we think is super appealing. Best of all, molasses plays very nicely with other superstars of great baked beans, meaning that you don't need to alter your favorite recipes much, if at all.

Bacon, for instance, goes delightfully well with sweets, and molasses is no different. Majorly upgrade canned baked beans with the simple additions of crumbled bacon and a couple tablespoons of molasses. Note that this isn't the time for store-bought bacon bits, as you want the meatiness and authentic flavor of the real thing. Other protein-rich additions that just make sense in baked beans and go great with molasses include kielbasa, chorizo, or ground beef.

To really amplify the sweetness you get from molasses, we also enjoy adding onion to our canned baked beans. To expedite your trip to FlavorTown, go ahead and add caramelized onions along with the meat(s) mentioned above. It's a bit time-consuming to properly caramelize onions, but you're already ahead with the time that you save using canned beans instead of dried ones. When paired with molasses, the flavor is going to be absolutely delicious.