Refried beans

I am a sucker for deals. And in shopping it seems I often pick up big bags of dried beans as they are always a good deal. However, the question sometimes becomes, what do you then do with all those beans? Usually I end up making a soup, a chili, or a lot of bean dip, but this time I wanted to do refried beans, as we were having Carnitas.

However, I had never done refried beans before and for some reason had the perception that they were difficult. I think this goes back to when I was a little kid and my older sister was going through a cooking Mexican food stage and made them from scratch. Refried beans from scratch wasn't even something my mom did and it seemed like quite the impressive feat. Especially after she followed up homemade refried beans with homemade sopaipilla. It was all very mysterious and delicious, and clearly must be difficult or else more people would do it.

The internet revealed that 'refried' is a mistranslation and 'refritos' actually means well fried. This fact relieved some new recipe anxiety as from the title one might assume you have to fry the beans and then fry them again. And that sounds like a pain.

To make refried beans, start with dried beans (or if you prefer, grab a can of beans a skip down a few steps). I usually use the whole bag, what ever size it is. This time I think I had 2lbs of beans. What you don't use to make refried beans you can bag up and freeze, and then you don't have to go through the soaking and cooking process next time you want beans.

Beans need to be soaked for at least 6 hours, and I prefer to do a cold water soak. To speed up the process you can boil your beans in some water, then turn it off and let them sit for 1 to 2 hours. Drain them, add more water and cook. However, your still waiting 1 to 2 hours for the beans to be done. To me it makes the most sense to either start soaking the night before if your planning on boiling them the next day, or if your planning on cooking them at night, start the soak in the morning. For the refried beans I used pinto beans which is what you get at a Mexican restaurant, though you could use any type of bean you like.

First, rinse you beans, look for any pebbles or dirt, or things that are not supposed to be in there and take them, and any beans that are shriveled up, out.

Put your rinsed beans in a bowl or pot and cover with water several inches over the beans. The beans will expand as they soak. Apparently the fresher your beans are the less time they will need to soak, but the age of the bean is not easy to tell from a bag of dried beans.

Leave your beans to soak for 6 or more hours (if you have less time to soak you will just have to boil longer). Do not soak for too long as apparently the beans can ferment, though I have never had this happen.

Drain the soaking water off of the beans and put the beans in a big pot, cover well with water--at least 3 times as much water as beans and you cannot have too much water. Bring the pot of water to a boil to cook beans. Cover and keep the pot at a low boil for an hour. Depending on the type and age of the beans it could take more time. After an hour, sample a bean, if it is still too firm boil longer and sample again. When the beans are cooked to your satisfaction, drain them. This process can be sped up to mere minutes if you have a pressure cooker.

For the refried beans:

Get a skillet out, add 1 T fat (oil or bacon grease-- we used bacon grease and it was delicious) and heat the skillet up. Add 1/4 cup minced onion if you like, I skipped this and 2 cups cooked beans (or if you bought a can of beans, drain and rinse them and throw them in the skillet). Get a potato masher, fork or spook out, and mash the beans as they fry in the skillet, when they are well mashed add water or broth (about 1/4 cup) and keep mashing until they are hot and the right consistency. Add salt to taste (about 1/2 teaspoon in my case). And there you have refried beans. If you have the cooked beans on hand this takes about 5 minutes.


Put any extra beans in freezer bags or storage containers and freeze. I just used the extras from when I did refried beans to make a tasty soup and it was nice not to have to soak the beans to make it. I do think beans taste better when you start with dried.

The recipe I modified for this can be found here. I quite enjoyed the refried beans and will absolutely do them again. They were much better than the ones out of the can. Though, that might have been the bacon grease.