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This Slow Cooker beanie weenies recipe is a true weeknight lifesaver — just five ingredients, barely any prep, and the Slow Cooker does all the work. Sliced hot dogs, canned baked beans, and a simple pantry sauce come together into something warm, hearty, and seriously satisfying.
Why You’ll Love It
Only 5 ingredients — hot dogs, canned beans, ketchup, mustard, brown sugar. That’s it.
Minimal prep — slice the hot dogs, dump everything in, stir, and walk away.
The Slow Cooker does the heavy lifting — LOW for 4–5 hours or HIGH for 2–3, and dinner is ready when you are.
Budget-friendly — the whole pot costs around seven dollars and feeds four to six people.
Endlessly flexible — swap the hot dogs, stretch it with extra beans, spice it up or keep it mild.
A Word About the Ingredients
Hot dogs: I use regular beef hot dogs, the kind in the yellow package that’s been around since before I was born. I don’t have strong brand loyalty here except to say that the cheap, thin ones don’t hold up as well once they’re sliced. You want something with a little substance to it.
Baked beans: Just two cans of whatever’s on sale. I’ve used the plain ones, the ones with brown sugar already in them, the maple-flavored ones. They all work. If you get the sweetened kind, ease up on the brown sugar I’m going to tell you to add, or the whole thing will be cloying.
Ketchup, yellow mustard, brown sugar: These three together make a sauce that sounds so simple it almost seems like a trick. It’s not. That little hit of tang and sweetness is what separates this from just beans with hot dogs floating in them. Don’t skip the mustard. I know some people are anti-mustard and I respect them as human beings, but in this recipe the mustard is doing something structural.
Ingredients
1 pound hot dogs, sliced into ½-inch pieces (I probably go a little thicker than that, honestly)
2 cans (15 ounces each) baked beans — plain or lightly sweetened
¼ cup ketchup
2 tablespoons yellow mustard
2 tablespoons brown sugar, packed (or 1 tablespoon if your beans are already sweet)
A little cooking spray or oil for the crock, if you remember to do it
How to Make It
Spray the inside of your Slow Cooker or rub it down with a little oil. I forget this step probably one out of every three times I make this recipe. You’ll survive either way, but cleanup is genuinely easier when you remember.
Slice your hot dogs into rounds about half an inch thick — I usually do this right over the slow cooker insert so I’m not dirtying a cutting board. Open both cans of baked beans and pour them over the top. Don’t drain them. The liquid in there is part of what keeps everything from drying out.
In a small bowl — or just the measuring cup — stir together the ketchup, mustard, and brown sugar until it’s mostly combined. It won’t be perfect, that’s fine. Pour it over the beans and hot dogs, then stir everything together so the sauce is distributed. It’s not going to look particularly beautiful at this stage. That’s okay.
Put the lid on, set it to LOW, and walk away for four to five hours. Or HIGH for two to three if you’re starting later in the day. I usually do LOW because I’ve got other things going on and I’m not trying to babysit anything. By the time it’s done, the sauce will have darkened slightly and gotten thicker and everything will smell like something you actually want to eat.
Give it a big stir before you serve. Taste it. Add a little extra mustard if you want more bite, or a splash of apple cider vinegar if it’s too sweet. I’ve done both at different times.
Variations
A version with kielbasa instead of hot dogs, sliced thin, is quite good — a little smokier, more substantial. Leaving out the brown sugar entirely works if you’re watching added sugar; the tang from the mustard and ketchup still carries the sauce.
I’ve added a drained can of pinto beans when I needed to stretch it further, and that works beautifully. You could do kidney beans too. The ratio of bean to hot dog just shifts a little.
If you want smoke — and I often do in the winter — a teaspoon of smoked paprika stirred in with the sauce is wonderful. Or a few dashes of liquid smoke if you have it, though I find I always buy liquid smoke for one specific thing and then it sits in the back of the cabinet for two years.
Hot sauce goes in mine at the table. We’ve had this negotiation for decades.
Leftovers
Refrigerate whatever’s left within a couple hours of it being done — don’t leave it sitting out on the counter overnight, even on WARM. Leftovers keep in the fridge for three or four days and reheat well on the stove with a splash of water to loosen things up. Or the microwave, covered, stirring halfway through. It thickens up a lot once it’s cold, which some people prefer.
A Few Last Things
Serve this over rice if you want to make it go further. Over a split baked potato with some shredded cheddar on top, which is extremely good. Or just in a bowl with buttered toast on the side, which is how I prefer it. Something about beans and butter toast together just makes sense to me.
I also keep the slow cooker on WARM and set out hot dog buns when there are more people around — you scoop the beanie weenie mixture right into the bun and it becomes this kind of sloppy chili dog situation that kids absolutely lose their minds over.
It’s not fancy. But it works, and some nights that’s the whole point.