Homemade Refried Beans

Back with another video… this time I’m going to show you how easy it is to make your own refried beans (frijoles refritos). This time I’m also partnering up with The WLS Reality channel on YouTube to bring this one to you.

Traditionally, refritos are made with pinto beans, but there’s nothing to say you can’t make them with whatever bean you want. Tonight I used adzuki beans, they have a bit of a nutty sweetness to them compared to pintos. Black beans or red beans would be worth trying too.

Like a lot of my cooking, this recipe is not a hard and fast set of rules, feel free to mix it up a bit to suit your tastes. I’ll give you the basics, the quick steps, then follow up with some easy variations you can make.

What you need:

1 can beans (1.5 cups), drained, with liquid reserved
1/2-3/4 cup diced onion
1 jalapeno pepper, stemmed and chopped
2 tablespoons butter
kosher salt
olive oil

Heat up a good sized skillet, cast-iron works great for this, over medium-low heat. When heated, drizzle in about a teaspoon or two of the olive oil and add your onion and pepper. You want to sweat these a bit, which is basically heating them up to get rid of some of the moisture, get the flavors out a bit. If they start browning, turn down the heat a bit.

This will take bout 3 minutes or so, then add your beans and a bit of the reserved liquid. You want to use the liquid to steam the beans a bit, soften them up enough so you can start mashing them with the back of a wooden spoon.

Keep stirring the beans, adding a bit of liquid as needed, and mashing the beans up. You want just enough liquid in the pan to keep a bit of steam going, and so the beans don’t start sticking to the pan and burn. You can make these as smooth or as chunky as your tastes run. When they are about where you want them, add the butter and about a teaspoon of the salt (or to taste), and stir those in until the butter is melted.

Serve the beans with a bit of cheese melted on top and a dollop of sour cream or yogurt.

As far as variations go, I already mentioned the beans… but instead of canned, I tend to use dried beans that I’ve cooked. If you do this, use about 1-1/2 cups of beans and you’ll need 1-2 cups of liquid. The liquid can be the water you cooked the beans in, chicken broth, vegetable broth, or just plain water. How much you need will depend on how well cooked the beans are. If you are cooking beans specifically for making refrieds, cook them longer than you would otherwise, it will save you time in the long run and make mashing them up easier.

As for the onion, add more or less or try different onions. I used red in the video cause it’s what I had on hand. Same for the jalapeno. Usually I keep a jar of sliced ones on hand and will just, but I like using a fresh one if I’ve planned ahead and have one to use. A bunch of the heat does cook out, but you can tone it down more by sedding the pepper before chopping it up… or try more (or hotter) peppers if you want more kick.

If you’re in early post-op stages, or you just can’t get the beans to mash up as smooth as you like them, go ahead and toss some or all of the beans in a blender with a bit of liquid and puree them up.

Like I say in the video, refried beans are soooo easy to make, there’s no reason to put up with the stuff in the can. I prefer using dried beans, but if you keep canned beans on hand, you can turn them in to refried beans in as little as 10 minutes, and they will taste so much better.

Oh, and quick trivia – the “re” in refritos actually would translate to “well fried”, not twice-fried as is commonly assumed.

Added note: I like to use the dry beans and “over cook” them so they are nice and soft and they mash up reaaaaaly easily.

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• Kay’s Naturals Protein Chips