Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans, also known as simply Grandma Brown Beans, is a brand name of canned baked beans that was founded by late Grandma Lulu Brown in 1937.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandma_Brown%27s_Baked_Beans
Grandma Brown’s Home Baked Beans was a brand of baked beans from central New York. They were popular with folks in the Northeast, but rarely seen in the rest of the country. They were founded when Grandma Lulu Brown used to make large pots of baked beans to sell during the Great Depression. Eventually they opened a plant in Mexico, New York, to produce large quantities. Unfortunately, the plant shut down due to the Pandemic and has not reopened. A google search turns up several local news articles from early to mid 2022 stating that “they might be coming back soon”, but hadn’t yet been able to hire the people they needed to reopen. With no more recent news, I think it’s a pretty good bet that they are gone for good.
I see a single 16 oz can selling on eBay for $70.00! I guess some people really are diehard fans! I don’t get the hype. There’s pretty much one recipe out there, which Grandma Brown’s fans say tastes like the real thing. There were a couple posts that tweaked that base recipe slightly, so my recipe doesn’t quite follow the predominant one, but it’s very close- slight differences in the amounts of sugar and salt mostly. And yeah, I’m underwhelmed.
To start with it’s very thick and mushy, almost refried bean consistency, and they aren’t even the right color for baked beans! Based on a video I watched of someone using actual canned Grandma Brown’s Beans, both those factors seems to be correct.
Flavor wise, they taste like… beans. Which is fine, but certainly not what I expect from something called baked beans. There’s a little smoky ham or bacon, and just a hint of sweet molassesy flavor from the brown sugar, but otherwise… beans. If you don’t really like traditional baked beans maybe these will do it for you. Apparently the real deal was frequently used as a base to doctor up with more molasses or maple syrup, bacon, ham, etc. I suppose from that viewpoint being relatively bland could be seen as a good thing, but why not just start with plain canned beans then? To each there own, I guess.
Although I’ve heard about it for years, I think this is the first time I’ve ever actually tried adding baking soda to my beans. I’ve seen it added to the soaking water and added when cooking. This time the beans were boiled for 10 minutes or so with the soda, then left to soak overnight and rinsed before cooking the rest of the way. Interestingly the beans didn’t swell that much when soaked in this manner, but did cook up very soft in the oven- too soft for my taste. I think one of the purported benefits to using baking soda is reducing the fart factor. Since I’m often gassy whether or not I’ve been eating beans, I can’t really say one way or the other.
So yeah, If you found your way here because you are a Grandma Brown’s fan missing their beans, by all means give this recipe a try and let me know what you think. Otherwise I’m going to suggest you look at one of my other baked beans recipes.
Copycat Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans
Serves: 6
Prep: 15 Minutes
Cook 5 Hour
Total: 5:15 plus overnight soaking
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6 ½ cups water
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 lb. navy beans
⅞ teaspoon salt
⅛-¼ teaspoon black pepper
⅓ cup brown sugar
1 medium onion, diced
1 bay leaf
3 oz ham, diced
OR
½ lb. cooked bacon, chopped
Boiling water, to cover
Optional:
¾ cup molasses
⅜ cup ketchup
3 Tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 Tablespoon dry mustard
Put 6 ½ cups of water in a pot and add the baking soda. Bring to a boil. Meanwhile, sort the beans and rinse them. When the water boils, add the beans and boil for 10 minutes. Remove from heat, cover and leave to soak overnight.
Preheat the oven to 300F.
Drain the beans and rinse thoroughly. Place them in a baking dish or oven safe pan with a tight fitting lid. Add the salt, pepper, brown sugar, onion, bay leaf and ham or bacon. Mix well, and add enough boiling water to just cover the beans. Cover the pan and bake for 5 hours. Stir every hour and add additional water as needed to keep the beans covered, keeping in mind that the finished dish should be quite thick.
Lorin cooks Legumes 
Your recipe used too much water, that’s probably why you ended up with mush use 6 cups, as far as adding bacon to the 1st cooking process I believe that’s incorrect as well. My grandmother made these all the time, from the original canned type, brown sugar was added to the canned type, not in the original cooking method.
I’m going to try to get the beans to the original canned consistency then add, brown sugar to them to taste, then put the in a rectangle casserole pan, top with bacon slices and cook at 350 for an hr.
Side note, my mother went to school Liverpool high school in Liverpool NY, she was good friends with gramma browns grandson Mason ( butch) Brown. The factory in Mexico NY did not belong to gramma brown, a corporation stole her recipe. They became rich from her recipe gramma brown got nothing. In the long run karma got the company in the end.
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Thanks for the feedback! Let me know how your experiments go.
As far as bacon goes, I haven’t ever gotten the chance to eat the real thing, so I based that off a bunch of other recipes that called for adding bacon in the first cook. Most other baked bean recipes include bacon or ham in the cooking process, but it’s typically not very much, so people tend to add more when they prepare the beans for serving. Same goes with the sweeteners.
It’s sad to hear that this was another example of corporations getting rich off the little guys.
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Thanks for your comment. I grew up going to Central Square School system and always had grandma brown beans on hand. I am baking up some Navy beans today.
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