Jones loves to cook baked beans

Rodney Jones started cooking as a teenager, learning by watching his mother, Ola Jones, prepare foods like baked beans, banana pudding, and hamburger casserole. Over the years, he also picked up cooking tips from his sister, Dorothy.

“My mother has several different recipes,” he said. “Of course, mine didn’t turn out the way hers did, but I just stick with it and try to make sure we got something to eat in the house that’s worth eating.”

Jones currently works as a dayshift supervisor at the Neshoba County Jail and attends Mt. Ary Missionary Baptist Church in town.

“I just like cooking,” Jones said. He particularly likes frying chicken and fish.

During his spare time at work, Jones takes charge of cooking for his department every other week on Fridays. 

Recently, his coworkers have fallen in love with his baked beans during these meals that began over the past month and a half or so.

“We kind of just throw things together,” he said. “Other folks grill, but they always request my baked beans.”

Jones’s special touch with his baked beans includes adding extra brown sugar, mustard, ketchup, or barbecue sauce.

“I might add a little more ingredients to expand the recipe,” Jones said. “I live by a simple philosophy that I’d rather have too much than not enough. I don’t want nobody coming over here and not having nothing to eat.”

Jones said his favorite dish to cook is baked beans paired with barbecue chicken, fish, or whatever else they feel like eating that day, and his go-to dish is hamburger casserole, which is a hit when friends gather around to watch football.

For family gatherings and holidays, he makes potato salad, cornbread, greens, and some “mean butterbeans”.

Jones said watching his mother prepare Thanksgiving dinners and seeing the variety of ingredients and seasonings she used are some of his best cooking memories.

Jones considers a measuring cup along with several plastic bowls and seasonings as his essential cooking tools and his advice to fellow cooks is to not get distracted. 

“When I’m cooking, I stay in the kitchen,” he said. “I don’t take a break to watch TV or talk on the phone. I just watch my food as it cooks.”

For Jones, the satisfaction of cooking a successful meal and seeing everyone enjoying it are what makes cooking so special for him. 

HAMBURGER 

CASSEROLE

2 lbs. ground beef

1 16 oz. bag elbow macaroni

1 can tomato sauce

1 can tomato paste

1/2 block of Velveeta cheese (chopped into squares)

1 large onion

1 large bell pepper

1/2 stick butter

Shredded cheese (garnish)

Boil macaroni then set aside. Brown ground beef with desired seasonings and remove from heat. Chop bell peppers and onions and sauté in butter, then add to ground beef mixture until completely combined. 

Add noodles, meat mixture, chopped Velveeta, tomato sauce, tomato paste; all in desired baking dish and bake on 350° for 25 minutes. 

Remove from oven and sprinkle with shredded cheese then place back in oven for an additional 5 minutes until cheese has melted. Remove from oven, allow to stand for 10 minutes, then serve.

BANANA PUDDING

1 box Banana Cream Instant Pudding

3-4 Bananas, chopped

1 box Vanilla Wafers

8 oz. Whipped Toppings

1 can Sweetened Condensed Milk

1 cup Whole Milk

1 cup Sugar

1 tsp. Vanilla Flavoring

Mix cream pudding and whole milk together until creamy. Combine sweetened condensed milk, sugar, vanilla flavoring, and whipped topping together, stirring completely, then add to pudding mixture.

Add vanilla wafers and desired number of bananas then spread completed mixture in serving dish. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Tip: you can also crumble some of the vanilla wafers to use as garnish. 

BIG SHOW’S BEANS

3 28 oz. cans of Bushes Original Baked Beans.

1 lb. of Ground Beef

1 16 oz. pack of Conecuh smoke sausage 

3 bell peppers (any color)

1 Vidalia sweet onion 

1/2 cup of mustard

1/2 cup of brown Sugar 

1 cup of Sweet baby rays barbecue sauce

Cut up the Bell peppers and onion. Put Baked Beans, Bell Peppers & Onions into a crockpot on warm.

Cook Ground Beef in a medium saucepan strain the grease out of the Ground Beef then add the ground Beef to the crockpot.

Repeat the same step with the sausage add the barbecue sauce, mustard, and Brown Sugar into the crockpot stir and mix thoroughly. Cook on Low for 1 hour and 30 minutes.