California Barbecued Beans

This dish traditionally uses a bean variety and chili sauce rarely seen outside of California. We wanted to recreate this regional recipe with nationally available supermarket ingredients. Here’s what we discovered:

Test Kitchen Discoveries

• Pink kidney beans proved to be a good stand-in for the hard-to-find pinquito beans called for in this native Santa Maria Valley dish.
• Some recipes suggest using jarred taco sauce if the original recipe’s requisite red chili sauce can’t be found, but its taste and texture are too thin. Instead, a combination of fried bacon, ham, onions, and garlic with tomato puree, brown sugar, and dry mustard captured the chili sauce’s bite.