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Boston Baked Beans

Ready In: 315 Minutes

Prep Time: 75 Minutes

Cook Time: 240 Minutes

Serves 4

Place the beans in a large pot. Cover with 4 quarts water and 1 teaspoon salt. Cover and simmer until just barely tender, about 1 hour. (Old purists say "until you can blow away the skins," which the eminent cookbook writer Fanny Farmer explains thusly: "Taking a few beans on the tip of a spoon, blow on them; the skins will burst if sufficiently cooked. Beans thus tested must of course be thrown away." Other Boston writers simply say to cook until the bean skins wrinkle and crack.)
Drain the beans, reserving the liquid. Cut slits in the pork rind to prevent it from curling. Place the pork in a bean pot and cover with 3 quarts of the reserved liquid; stir in mustard, salt, pepper, onion, molasses, and brown sugar. Add beans, placing the salt pork deep in the center. Bake at 300°, covered, for 3 hours, stirring now and then and adding additional reserved bean liquid as necessary.
Remove cover and bring salt pork to the top to brown. Cook an additional hour.