Homemade Refried Beans

We eat beans in one form or another on most days of the week. Black beans, lentils, pinto beans, red beans, garbanzo beans; you name it. I find them to be a great friend to the large family table on a budget. They are inexpensive but they can get boring or even hard to eat if you don’t switch it up often enough.

I am very grateful to be married to one of the least picky eaters I know. Stewart pretty much never complains; starting each meal with a “Thank you for breakfast/lunch/dinner,” that has trickled down even to little Joshie who says “Fank you, mama!”. Even when supplies run low or Mama just slapped something together at the last minute or can’t hardly look at what I’m cooking for morning sickness so who knows how it turned out, he is grateful.

So when Stewart recently very kindly asked if we could do something different with the beans, I knew things had gotten bad. I suspect first trimester fatigue blended right into full-on gardening season and a few too many months of a straight pot of nothing but beans started to take its toll. As soon as he said it, I realized that everyone one of us  felt exactly the same way.

Refried beans was one suggestion and so I ran with it. I had remembered seeing a recipe for homemade refried beans on my friend Kris’ site and I started with that as the inspiration. This began right around the time we butchered the hog so I had strips of mostly fat with a touch of meat that I could throw into the pot.

So recently I have been making a pot of these once a week, along with a pot of Mexican rice. We eat it with meat and salad the first day and throw the leftovers into the solar refrigerator. The next day I throw the leftover rice and beans into the oven and warm them while I make a quick salad and maybe grate some cheese and chop avocado. It makes for great leftovers and an easy meal for Mama.

And everyone is happily eating beans again.

Homemade Refried Beans

Ingredients

• 2 lb dry pinto beans
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 2 quarts bone broth
• 1/4 cup lard or coconut oil
• 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 5-6 tsp. salt
• 1 T. ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne
• Bean juice as needed

Directions

Soak the beans for 12-24 hours before proceeding with the recipe. Once soaked, drain the soaking water from the beans.

Combine the pinto beans, onion, broth, and lard or coconut oil in a Dutch oven. Add additional water to cover the beans, if needed. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Cover and let cook 1-2 hours or until beans are very tender. You can add additional liquid as needed but you want a good bit of the liquid to cook off the beans. Once cooked, drain the liquid from the beans, reserving the remaining bean juice.

Add the vinegar, salt, ground cumin, garlic powder, and ground cayenne to the beans. Adding reserved bean liquid as needed, mash or blend the beans using an immersion blender until they are to your preferred consistency. Remember that as the beans cool, they will thicken up a great deal. I generally use all of the remaining bean liquid and add it to the hot beans as I mash and end up with something just thicker than Mexican restaurant-consistency refried beans.

When they are to your desired consistency, taste and add additional salt as needed.