Smoky Three Bean Bake

On our return trip from NYC to Atlanta last weekend, we bought a Cooking Light "favorite comfort foods" special issue and marked about a dozen recipes that we want to try. This weekend we got ingredients to try 4 of them, starting with this bean recipe and brussel sprouts on Saturday.

This bean dish is very easy to make, tastes great, and made great leftovers for work on Monday.

Baked bean dish

Smoky Three Bean Bake

4-5 slices of turkey bacon, chopped
2 cups chopped onion
1 cup chopped green bell pepper
chopped celery (I added to recipe)
6 garlic cloves, minced
3/4 cup canned tomato sauce (I used garlic flavored)
1/3 cup brown sugar
1 Tbsp cider vinegar
1 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp smoked paprika
3/4 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground black pepper (or less)
1/4 tsp ground red pepper
Three 15-oz cans of beans, drained. We used: black beans, Great Northern beans, cannellini beans.

• Preheat oven to 325-degrees.
• Heat large skilled over medium-high. Add bacon to pan and saute for 5 minutes, until crisp. Remove from skillet. Add onion, bell pepper, celery, garlic. Saute 6 minutes, until tender. Remove from heat.
• Combine tomato sauce, brown sugar, vinegar, honey, mustard, paprkia, salt, black pepper, red pepper, and stir with whisk.  Spoon in onion mixture, beans, bacon.
• Spoon into 11x7 glass dish. Cover and bake at 325 for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake for another 15-30 minutes.

Making the sauce

3 bean dish