Inside: These cowboy baked beans with bacon make the best side dish for grilled meat (ever!) My recipe includes two pounds of meat on top of fantastic flavors that all come together in an amazing way.
The BEST Crock Pot Meaty Baked Beans
What are cowboy baked beans?
In our house, cowboy baked beans are baked beans with meat, it’s as easy as that.
Whether it’s cowboy baked beans with pulled pork, cowboy beans with hamburger, or any kind of meaty baked beans when you have the time to prepare a cowboy baked beans recipe like this, it’s worth the extra effort, there’s no doubt.
Regular baked beans are essentially baked beans that you’d see on the shelf, like the Bush’s Baked Beans brand. And, while those are good… my cowboy beans are just kicked up a notch and full of interesting flavor with each bite.
Because my authentic cowboy beans recipe is cowboy baked beans with ground beef and bacon, you really could enjoy these as a meal, too (bonus!)
In my opinion, this delicious cowboy beans Crock Pot recipe could also be enjoyed as a dip, too. By simply digging in with some salty potato chips, this could easily become an appetizer to go with Ruffles or Lay’s chips, too (YUM!)
One more thing before I get into how I assemble this cowboy bean bake… I do use my slow cooker in this recipe. I love using my Ninja 3-in-1 here for this recipe for the fact that I can brown the bacon and ground beef on the stovetop setting and then set the know to slow cook.
Since the way I make this recipe for cowboy baked beans is part stovetop and part slow cooker it works out really well. You certainly would not need the Ninja 3-in-1, you’d just have a few extra dishes if you don’t. But, of course, no worries there.
Alright, onto how these beans come together….
One more thing though, I’d be remiss if I didn’t let you know about, is the other really, super-duper popular side dishes that are also big hits around Moms Cravings.
Some of those that you probably want to look at as well are crockpot cheesy potatoes, oven-baked cheesy potatoes, creamy baked mac and cheese (my favorite!) and a fun baked potato bar!
Cowboy Baked Beans
Ingredients
- 1 pound bacon
- 1 pound ground beef
- sweet onion
- 3 cans pork and beans not drained
- 2 cans black beans drained and rinsed
- 2 cans light kidney beans drained and rinsed
- 2 T Molasses
- 3/4 cup light brown sugar
- 2 T yellow mustard
- 1/4 cup ketchup
- 1 tsp liquid smoke
- 1/2 cup barbecue sauce
- 2 cloves minced garlic or garlic powder
Instructions
- Cut raw bacon into 1-inches pieces and brown on medium.
- Once browned, remove bacon and all but 2 T bacon grease from pan
- Brown ground beef in bacon grease, drain
- Dice onion and brown until translucent in same pan
- Add bacon and ground beef back into onions
- Add remaining ingredients to bacon, beef and onion mixture, stir gently
- Cover and slow cook on low for 2 hours