Crockpot Baked Beans with Bacon and Brown Sugar

Crockpot baked beans: Your new favorite dish for summer cookouts! This recipe is the easy way to make baked beans – made right in your slow cooker with canned beans, bacon, brown sugar and ketchup. Full of flavor, 10 minutes of prep time and no heating up the house!

Baked beans from a can were pretty much a staple food in our home growing up.

It wasn’t until my early twenties that I tried making my own. And while I still cherish the canned stuff, I absolutely love my homemade baked beans!

I do cheat to make these super easy, so they are semi-homemade – like my Pineapple BBQ Crockpot Baked Beans are, too. I definitely use the cooked beans from a can, because to me, cooking dried beans in the crock freaks me out (too many bad stories about undercooked beans from friends and family). Doesn’t mean they are any less delicious though!

These homemade baked beans

• are prepped in 5 minutes!
• simmer in your slow cooker for a totally hands-off side dish
• are very flavorful with bacon and brown sugar
• can easily be doubled or tripled to feed a large crowd

Watch the recipe video

Ingredients in baked beans

Here is a visual overview of the ingredients in the recipe. Scroll down to the printable recipe card at the bottom of this post for quantities!

Ingredient notes

• Beans: I like using a mix of navy beans and pinto beans to make it more interesting, but feel free to use just one kind if you prefer.
• Ketchup: Can also use BBQ sauce instead of ketchup for a more smokey flavor. I usually do ketchup because my children are little still.
• Onion: Feel free to leave it out or substitute dried onion flakes or powder if you prefer.

How to make baked beans in the slow cooker

Recipe tips

• Careful when stirring: Try to stir carefully so you don’t mash up all the beans!
• Heat setting: I do not recommend cooking the beans on the HIGH setting – the sauce tends to catch and burn a lot on the side of the slow cooker that way. The LOW setting for a longer time works a lot better for baked beans.
• Adjust ketchup to taste: If the mixture doesn’t look juicy enough, add a bit more ketchup. Just remember that liquids about double when cooking in a slow cooker, so don’t overdo it. You can also add more ketchup once the cooking time is up!

Serving ideas

I love to have baked beans on toast – that’s how we ate them as kids all the time for dinner!

But they’re obviously mainly a popular BBQ side dish. So serve them up with some pulled pork in a bun or with BBQ chicken! And by the way, my Crockpot Mac and Cheese recipe and my coleslaw are other sides that goes so well with typical BBQ or cookout food.

More summer slow cooker recipes

PS If you try this recipe, please leave a review in the comment section and add a star rating in the recipe card – I appreciate your feedback! Follow along on Pinterest, Facebook or Instagram.

Printable recipe

I hope you’ll enjoy these baked beans! They are one of my favorite easy side dishes for summer. Recipe first shared on Unfussy Kitchen.

More easy summer side dishes