Frijoles Refritos, Refried Pinto Beans
Refried beans are the workhorse of the Tex-Mex and northern Mexican plate, spread under enchiladas, spooned beside rice, or scooped up warm as a dip. The name misleads English speakers: the Spanish refrito means well fried, cooked hard in the pan, not fried a second time. The classic technique starts with a generous amount of lard, which carries flavor and gives the beans their gloss. Neither is necessary once you understand what the fat was doing, because a pinto bean is naturally starchy and turns creamy the moment you mash it into its own cooking liquid over heat. Cook the beans from dried so you control the salt and keep the flavorful broth, which is half the recipe. A spoon of nutritional yeast stirred in at the end pushes it toward the savory, cheesy note of a bean dip if that is how you are serving it.
Ingredients
- 3 cups Pinto beans, cooked from dried, with 1 cup (240 ml) of their liquid
- 1/2 cup Yellow onions, finely diced
- 3 cloves Garlic, minced
- 1 tsp Cumin seed, toasted and ground
- 1 tsp pure chile powder
- 1/2 tsp Dried oregano, Mexican
- 1 tbsp Lime juice
Method
- Sweat the onion and garlic in a wide, heavy skillet with 3 tablespoons (45 ml) of water until soft and just starting to color, about 6 minutes. This soft aromatic base replaces the flavor that rendered lard would traditionally bring.
- Add the ground cumin, chile powder, and crumbled oregano and stir for 30 seconds until fragrant, blooming the spices in the heat of the pan.
- Add the cooked pinto beans along with half their liquid. Bring to a simmer.
- Mash the beans right in the pan with a potato masher or the back of a sturdy spoon, working them into a coarse paste and adding more bean liquid as you go. Use a masher, not a blender: refried beans are meant to have some texture, and mashing while they fry is where the name comes from. Refrito means well fried, not fried twice.
- Keep cooking and stirring as the paste dries out and thickens, 5 to 8 minutes, until it holds a line drawn through it with the spoon. The starch in the beans thickens everything, so no fat is needed to make it creamy.
- Stir in the lime juice off the heat. It lifts the whole dish and does the brightening that salt usually gets credit for. Loosen with a splash of bean liquid before serving if it stiffens as it sits.
Nutrition
Estimated per serving: 130 calories, 7 g protein, 7 g fiber, 25 mg sodium. Computed from USDA FoodData Central reference values for the main ingredients. This is an approximation, not a laboratory measurement. How these are computed.
Cost per serving is estimated from US national-average retail prices for cheap staple forms, using BLS dried-bean prices and USDA produce prices. Prices vary by store and season, so treat it as a guide, not a receipt. How this is computed.
