Good Question: Where’s Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans?

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Wednesday’s Good Question: Where are the beans? If you’ve been on the lookout for Grandma Brown’s Famous Baked Beans, you’re in good company.

Every week we get questions about a summer staple, Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans — the perfect complement to your cook-outs and barbecues.

Many of you have told us the beans are nowhere to be found. However, one creative YouTuber has a homemade alternative.

After a pause in production during the pandemic, last summer we told you the beans were back. But since then, they seem to have vanished again.

While the future of the original beans is still in question, meet “BanDana Gramma.”

”I grew up in Upstate NY. And I grew up in the Skatacoke area which is just outside the capital district, about 20 minutes from Troy, and we always had Grandma Brown’s, every picnic, every home gathering,” says BanDana Grandma.

Now based in Maryland, she decided to put her own spin on the beloved beans with a homemade recipe that she shows you how to make on YouTube.

”I looked at the ingredients on the can, and they didn’t have all that many ingredients on it,” says Banana Grandma. “And I fussed with them and fussed with them. And then I looked online for other recipes that people had done and I tried them and they weren’t quite right, and you know I’d doctor them up a little, and still not quite right. And I stumbled upon one that was really, really good.”

So she filmed herself making it and put it online. She now has more than 13,000 YouTube followers.

What inspired her to start her channel?

”I said to my kids. I miss my girls, I miss my kids you know, and I expected them to come visit more and more and more. They said ‘mom you ought to get a dog’, just kind of kidding. So I got YouTube instead,” she explains.

BanDana Gramma says she is also working on an Instant Pot version of the beans, and plans to post that video in the next couple weeks. You can follow her YouTube channel here and Facebook here.

News10NBC’s Emily Putnam called Grandma Brown’s headquarters in Mexico, New York to ask about the status of production — still waiting to hear back.  

If you have a question you’d like answered, send us an email to GoodQuestion@whec.com.