The Saga of Maine's Traditional Bean-Hole Beans


on the bean pot.

What Kind of Beans Work the Best?

The consensus of the sources I found indicates that yellow-eye beans are the best for this particular dish, though many other varieties are mentioned. White pea beans are a common ingredient of New England baked beans. Others mention great northern beans, Jacob's Cattle beans, soldier beans, and other varieties. Yellow-eye beans, however, are the overwhelming favorite.

The Rich Tradition of Bean-Hole Beans

In Maine, bean-hole beans are the stuff of folklore. Families have long traditions surrounding the beans and the family bean holes. Recipes are jealously guarded and bean holes are kept and used for decades.

The Maine Folklife Center website quotes the recollections of four Maine old-timers, explaining the rituals and traditions associated with bean-hole beans in their families. The stories are fun to read. You can also see photo galleries of the bean-hole bean cooking process, read how a forty-year bean-hole cook does it, and get the whole history of bean-hole beans there.

Other Recipes

The recipe that you see everywhere on the Web (with the "bean bean pot" typo) is at http://portlandme.about.com/library/blrecp1.htm?once=true&, among many other places.

A good recipe for a larger but still reasonably sized batch is at AllRecipe.com at http://maindish.allrecipes.com/AZ/BnHlBns.asp.

The crowd-sized recipe, starting with 11 pounds of yellow-eye beans, is at http://www.umaine.edu/folklife/bhbrecipes.htm.

I'm not sure I'm ready to go to all the work to dig a pit, build a fire, and wait all night for the beans to cook, but I'd surely be the first in line to get some if someone around here ever puts on a bean-hole bean supper.

Copyright © 2001 Richard Mann. All rights reserved. Please contact the author for permission to use this article (includes reprints in mailing lists, newsletters, and/or any other purpose/format) and give details of its proposed use. Any and all use of this article in any way without permission is prohibited under copyright law. Acceptable use: Please feel free to link to this page.

The copyright of the article The Saga of Maine's Traditional Bean-Hole Beans in Bean Recipes is owned by Richard Mann. Permission to republish The Saga of Maine's Traditional Bean-Hole Beans in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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