The menu at Fat Matt’s Rib Shack includes a half dozen side dishes, but our family favorite is the “rum” baked beans. No matter what else we’re eating, we need those baked beans on the side. But if we could make them at home, we could order something else. Will they share the recipe?
— Noelle Latham, Decatur
When we called Fat Matt’s Rib Shack co-owner Wes James about sharing this recipe, he rattled it off from memory.
It’s no wonder he has the recipe memorized given that the restaurant prepares between 45 and 55 gallons of these baked beans every week. Each restaurant-sized batch calls for 28 pounds of canned navy beans and 7 pounds of ketchup among all the other ingredients. We’ve scaled down the recipe for home cooks. It will still make enough for a crowd, but is easy to cut in half if you don’t need quite this much.
“I like baked beans with the fat and flavor of bacon, but because we offer this as a vegetarian option, there’s no bacon in our recipe. But someone making it at home can add bacon if they like,” James said.
Canned navy beans can be difficult to find at the grocery store. One pound of dried navy beans, more easily found, will cook up to 6 cups of beans so substitute 1 1/2 pounds of dried navy beans, cooked according to package directions, for the canned beans called for in this recipe. Or substitute canned pinto beans. They do not drain or rinse the beans at the restaurant and we found that worked best when preparing these beans at home.
Fat Matt’s Rib Shack’s “Rum” Baked Beans
9 cups canned vegetarian navy beans (from 6 15-ounce cans)
1 1/3 cups ketchup
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons lightly packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons spicy brown mustard
1/4 cup chopped onion
3 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
3 tablespoons Cajun Chef Louisiana hot sauce
2 tablespoons dark spiced rum
Heat oven to 350 degrees.
In a large bowl, stir together beans, ketchup, brown sugar, mustard, onion, vinegar, hot sauce and rum. Pour into a 9-by-13-inch baking dish. Cover dish with foil and bake 30 minutes. Uncover, stir beans and bake 10 more minutes or until the beans and sauce at the edge of the dish are bubbling. Serve hot or warm.
Makes 11 cups.
Per 1/2-cup serving: 206 calories (percent of calories from fat, 2), 10 grams protein, 41 grams carbohydrates, 12 grams total sugars, 7 grams fiber, 1 gram total fat (trace saturated fat), no cholesterol, 768 milligrams sodium.
From the menu of ... Fat Matt’s Rib Shack. 1811 Piedmont Ave. NE, Atlanta; 404-607-1622, fatmattsribshack.net.
Is there a recipe from a metro Atlanta restaurant you’d like to make at home? Tell us and we’ll try to get it. We’ll also test it and adapt it for the home kitchen. Because of volume, we can’t answer all inquiries. Send your request, your address and phone number to fromthemenu@gmail.com and put “From the menu of” and the name of the restaurant in the subject line.
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