Boston Pork and Beans - How to make perfect comfort food

So, it's a boiling hot day outside but it's September and my internal British calendar tells me it's time for cozy jumpers, hot tea, endless days of cold drizzle and therefore comfort food. Since I have a long holiday weekend this weekend for Labour Day, which pretty much is to celebrate union workers' right to strike, it seems somewhat fitting that I'm about to share with you a recipe that is lazy and makes the oven do all the work so you can lounge around!
I'd read a few recipes for Boston Baked Beans that looked pretty tasty but when I first set out to make it last autumn I was struggling with the aisles of American supermarkets so I had to glue some recipes together and use a bit of improvisation. It worked out rather nicely so I'm sticking with this version.
And fear not, if you are following this from the UK, the ingredients are not American only - lucky for you all ingredients are available both sides of the pond.

Now without further ado - the ingredients:

• Either one large or two smaller smoked ham hocks - totalling about 1.5 lbs (600/700g or so) in weight. Ask your butcher for these and if he doesn't have them you want smoked bacon on the bone if you can, or failing that a slab of smoked bacon with the rind still on (not in slices) that you can cut into chunks about 2 inches square. but really, getting it on the bone is way better.
• 1 lb (500g) of dry pinto beans which have a deliciously buttery flavour - soak these puppies in about 6-8 cups of water overnight.
• About 10 small red or white pearl onions - soak these in water for about an hour and they'll be easier to peel.
• 3 or 4 tablespoons of Molasses (in the US) or Lyle's Treacle (in the UK)
• 1/2 teaspoon of ground cloves
• 2 heaped tablespoons of dark brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce (many recipes add some type of mustard instead but I'm not such a fan and found this added enough spice to make up for the lack of mustard)

So now, the instructions (complete with pictures and everything).
1. As I said, you need to soak the beans overnight, so give them a good rinse then just cover them in about 6-8 cups of water from the tap and leave them there.  The next day, put the onions into a bowl of cold water to soak, then drain the beans, give them a good rinse and chuck them into a good giant casserole with about 2 litres of water, bring them up to a good boil then simmer with the lid on for an hour while you peel the onions. When you've done that, they'll look like this:

2. Next, stir all the other ingredients into the beans (including the onions)

and stick the pork hocks (or bacon if you really couldn't get the meat on the bone) down into the mixture.









At which point, it will look something like this:

Whack a lid on it and put it in the oven at 140C (285 F in the US) and leave it there for 3 hours.




3. Take the lid off and turn the temperature up to 160C (320F), strip the meat from the bones with a knife and fork - it should just fall away. Return it to the oven for another hour and fifteen mins until it's all gone deliciously sticky (keep checking on it and stirring it to make sure the top doesn't burn and you get the caramelised deliciousness all the way through.

That's it - serve it with hot granary bread or on a jacket potato - absolutely yummy.