Back in the day, when masonry ovens retained plenty of heat throughout the night, this was a great perk: You could throw a pot of beans in the oven (or in an earthen hole, if you were cooking outdoors) in the evening and open it in the morning to find something that wasn’t mush. Today, though, the molasses creates a minor challenge. Either we follow in our forebears’ footsteps by sticking a pot of beans in the oven overnight, or we need some kind of trick to cut the cooking time slightly.
But there are some drawbacks to this method. First, it takes a damned long time. And second, you have to feel comfortable going to bed with your oven on, which you may not for fire safety reasons. (Frankly, I’m not sure I should even recommend it, for liability reasons.) A slow cooker might solve this overnight problem, but without the all-around dry heat of an oven, it wouldn’t allow for much of the critically important evaporation and surface browning.
