Baked Bean Casserole (with Ground Beef)

Bean casseroles are great. You can make them with canned or dried right out of the bag. Served warm like this one or added into a cold salad makes for a cheap potluck dish that goes with almost any protein for dinner time. (post may contain affiliate links present)

How can you add flavor to baked beans?

You can change these up a bunch of different ways. Want to make them spicy? Add some red pepper flakes, cayenne, or Tobasco into the mix. Prefer a bit of sweetness like our Apple Pie Baked Beans? Add a bit of brown sugar or like we did in those, a bit of pie filling or fruit bits.

Slow Cooker Directions

You can make this in a Crockpot too. You’d follow our Baked Beans with Ground Beef for those instructions. If I want to prep some dishes in the morning this is a great one to do just that. Takes one thing off of my list if I have a lot to cook during the holidays for sure.

A variety of ingredients for a baked bean casserole are arranged on a white wooden surface, including a can of country-style baked beans, Worcestershire sauce, chopped bacon, a green bell pepper, shredded cheese, a ground meat package with an American flag sticker, an onion, measuring cups with sauce, and mustard.

A close-up of a skillet filled with baked bean casserole, ground meat, yellow mustard, and ketchup. A bottle is seen from the top right corner, pouring additional sauce onto the mixture. The skillet handle is visible on the left side of the image.

Can you make baked bean casserole with dry beans?

You can. If you wanted to start with our directions of How to Cook Navy Beans you could do that, drain, and then add the sauce ingredients in with those to simmer. Homemade is always best and you can really mess with the flavors this way vs. canned which already has some sweet sauce in the mix.

Want to start from dry but faster? We have directions for Instant Pot Baked Beans here you can follow. The only difference is you would follow those directions, dump into a serving dish, saute the meat and fold together to serve.

Ingredient Notes

You are going to start with a roll of ground beef. Now if you wanted to make it spicy I would opt for spicy Jimmy Dean Sausage or half and half for just a bit of heat. Makes for a hamburger meat recipes that kids just love.

Onions diced and some green bell peppers we like diced in there but both of these are optional. I do like to saute them first to get them tender (especially so the kids won’t complain). If you do this in the bacon grease it is out of this world.

Diced slices of bacon are killer but of course optional. You could go with leftover ham after the holidays too but uncured Hormel bacon is the best.

Canned baked beans were used, pork and beans work too but I prefer brown sugar Bush’s if you ask me.

Then let’s get to the sauce. You want some good ol’ Heinz Ketchup to make the with your favorite type of Barbecue sauce, a pop of some Worcestershire sauce, a dash of regular Dijon mustard and we like cheddar cheese shredded on the top.

Depending on the ingredients, yes in this case you can. First off you need a large one so the contents won’t bubble over and make a complete mess. A lid is helpful to keep it warm when done or if you are adding noodles or grains they may need time to get tender with it on. In the case of cast iron, you can saute and bake in the oven at the end.