The Old-School Potluck Dish That Effortlessly Stretched Ground Beef

Plenty of old-school dishes now have a bad reputation, but you can't deny that the home cooks of the 50s, 60s, and 70s knew how to work with ground beef. Sure, we still love meatloaf and sloppy joes today, but recipe books used to be filled with dishes like Salisbury steak and American-style ground beef goulash that were all about stretching meat and saving a dollar. But while plenty of old recipes have passed away with good reason, there are some that are worth holding onto. And one ground beef dish that's been hanging around, but deserves to be more popular, is calico beans.

If you already know calico beans, you might also know they are related to or interchangeable with another dish called cowboy beans. Both dishes are simple but delicious bean casseroles, made with ground beef and bacon, often flavored with a sweet-and-tangy barbecue-style sauce. Think of a more hearty and Western version of traditional baked beans. Calico beans get their name because they use multiple different kinds and colors of beans, in reference to the multi-colored pattern most associated with calico cats, or the older calico fabric the cats were originally named after.

While calico beans don't have a clear, definitive origin, it's an old-school dish that was perfect for potlucks and backyard barbecues, being simple to make in large batches, and ahead of time. In fact, calico beans are a classic dish that often gets better in the days after you make it.

The other nice thing about calico beans? They are really, really easy. Being an old-school dish, most recipes rely on canned beans instead of cooking completely from scratch. The standard is three types of beans, although you'll see more, and it really comes down to personal taste. The basic combo most recipes start with is a can of pork and beans, kidney beans, and butter beans. The pork and beans are the ones you'll least want to swap out, because the meaty flavor and the tomato-based sauce they usually come in are important to the depth of the final dish.

Everything is cooked in a pan before going into a casserole dish to bake. Calico beans start with rendering the chopped or sliced bacon, then cooking the onion in the fat. Then the ground beef gets browned before the cans of beans are added. Finally, the sauce is added, which is most often a mixture of ketchup, brown sugar, mustard, and vinegar. Then everything goes in the oven and is baked until bubbly and thick.

As you can tell, this is a recipe made for customizing with what you have on hand. Molasses is a potential addition, as is chili powder and/or cayenne for a little heat. You can also skip the mixture of sugar and condiments and just go with a straight-up barbecue sauce instead. Calico beans aren't the kind of thing you want to be too precious about. It's a simple base template that can be tweaked to the tastes of any family or gathering.