I love baked beans. The canned kind, the oven-baked kind, but especially the ones made beneath the coals of a campfire which are called Bean Hole beans.

As the name implies, the beans are cooked in a hole that has been dug under a fire, then the hole is covered with coals and the beans cooked until they are soft and thick and ready to eat right on the spot.

To start, you need to find a sturdy cooking pot. One that won't melt when buried amidst live coals. Something like an old dutch oven that is missing its handle, that cast iron pot with a lid that your Grandmother gave you or the stainless steel kettle you scored at the Thrift store.

It needs to be big enough to hold about 25 cups of "stuff" that will later become baked beans. To prevent scorching and blackening of the pot's exterior some opt to cover the pot and lid in tin foil or rub dish soap on it. We opted to fire our old pot in the hole the way it was. Being cast iron, it later scrubbed up just great with little effort.