As I've mentioned here before — to little apparent interest — I was a big fan of the cuisine at the old Love's Barbecue Restaurants. Alas, there are no more Love's except (according to the company website) for an alleged one in Jakarta, Indonesia. I'm dubious it's there and when I get a moment, I'm going to run over and check. In the meantime, all of the ones in this country have definitely closed. The only place that I believe still serves what is essentially the Love's menu is a former Love's situated in Brea, California. It's called Riley's.
My favorite thing on the Love's menu was their barbecued beans. When it became apparent to me that all the Love's were going away, I began searching for their recipe to see if it was possible for me to replicate these beans in my home kitchen. It doesn't take a lot of Googling to find two different recipes, both of which are presented as The Love's Recipe, sometimes with a little tale about how a friend who worked in one broke the Barbecue Code and divulged the secret. Here's one of these recipes…
- 5 pounds canned pork and beans
- 1 pound brown sugar
- 1 (14 oz.) bottle ketchup
- 2 bell peppers, chopped
- 1 teaspoon liquid smoke, to taste
- 8 slices bacon
Combine all ingredients except bacon in a large casserole or baking pan. Top with bacon strips. Bake at 325 degrees for 2 1/4 hours.
You'll find that recipe on at least a hundred websites and it may even yield a great pot of beans…but there's no way that's the Love's recipe. Love's beans did not contain bell peppers (I hate bell peppers) and were not topped with slices of bacon…and what's this about starting out with some arbitrary brand of canned pork and beans? Wouldn't the output of this recipe vary a lot depending on which brand of canned pork and beans you started with? Also, Love's beans tasted an awful lot like Love's barbecue sauce, and there's nothing in the above about adding in Love's sauce or any of the same spices. So phooey on this recipe.
A little more Googling and you may come up with the following putative recipe for Love's beans. This one is usually represented as having been exposed by an article in the L.A. Times…
- 3 (1 pound) cans pork n' beans
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
- 2 teaspoons chili powder
- 1/4 cup dark molasses
- 1/2 cup bottled chile sauce
- 2 tablespoons vinegar
Combine all ingredients in bean pot or crockpot with lid, mix well. Cover and bake at 400 degrees F for 1 hour for thin bean mixture, or 1 1/2 to 2 hours for thicker bean mixture. Sprinkle with crumbled bacon bits to serve.
That sounds a little more like it but even without testing, I know that's not it. Again, we're starting with some random brand of canned beans, which means we have some arbtitrary sauce going into our concoction. Again, we have those bacon bits. I don't believe Love's beans had much, if any chili flavoring in them (I hate chili) and again, I don't see the elements in there that would convey or approximate the taste of Love's sauce.
It's still possible, by the way, to purchase Love's sauce via their website. It's a sweet BBQ sauce and usually I don't like sweet sauces…but I like this one and I sometimes use it in cooking. In case you're interested, the label on the bottle says it contains water, tomato paste, brown sugar, corn syrup, vinegar, salt, modified food starch, sucrose, spices, natural flavorings and a couple of chemicals.
One night recently, I actually had the following dream. It is rare that I remember dreams after I awaken and maybe the reason I recalled this one was that it came with a decent punchline.
A restaurant opened nearby that advertised itself as featuring the best dishes from now-defunct restaurant chains. Not a bad idea when you think about it. The proprietors, they said, had tracked down the owners of the extinct eateries and made deals to use their recipes and also their logos, so you could go in and get a simulation of some meal that you used to love at a chain no longer in business.
On the slim chance that they had included Love's in their repertoire, I raced to the restaurant and on the outside saw a display of the logos and names of the long-gone dining establishments whose menus were involved. As happens in dreams, the specifics were fuzzy…but I saw all these famous logos and in the middle of them was the one for Love's.
Ecstatic, I raced inside and took a seat at the counter. A waitress offered me a menu but for some reason, I declined. "Just bring me one of everything from the Love's section," I told her. "We only have one item from Love's," she said. "Whatever it is, bring me five of them," I said. Again, I have no idea why I did this in my dream but, you know, you do things in dreams that don't make a lot of sense. Some of us do things when we're awake that don't make a lot of sense, too.
So I sat there in this dreamed-up restaurant, drooling and anticipating and wondering which of the wonderful Love's entrees would soon be placed before me in quintuple helpings. Their ribs? Their chicken? Their ribs-chicken combo? Whatever it was, it surely came with a side of Love's beans and that's what I was really there for…to eat Love's beans. I waited and waited and waited for what seemed like months…and finally, just when I was beginning to give up hope, the serving lady came over and placed my order on the counter…
It was five vanilla milk shakes.
I'm not making this up. I really dreamed this, punchline and all.