Most of my lunches are eaten in the car, either as I drive or while I’m parked between clients, and so some kind of burrito/quesadilla mash-up is one of my staple food items. Luckily, if you buy the low or non-fat beans, they’re quite healthy, but why buy it when you can make it yourself?
Oh, did I mention there’s almost no time or effort involved at all, and it’s cheaper AND healthier to cook them at home? Do I have your attention now? 
** I took photos for this post the first time I made the beans, but I’ve since made them a few more times and simplified the recipe. However, that means that now my pictures and words won’t match! Oh well. You’ll get over it! And if you want to see the original recipe that I took the pictures of, you can find it here. **
Ingredients and Tools
- crock pot
- 3 cups dried pinto beans
- 9 cups water
- salt
- pepper
- taco seasoning
- mixer
- salsa (optional)
What I Did
I rinsed the beans and then threw them, the water, and the seasonings into the crock pot. I let it sit for about 10 hours (which is the beauty of the crock pot, of course! I’ve done it for much longer than that, and I suspect it would be fine if you did less than that, but 10 is the shortest I’ve tried so far. I think if the beans are hard, then they’re not done. Otherwise, you’re golden!)
The beans as they are cooking. I don't like the taste or smell of onions, so I didn't use them again after this first trial.
Once they’re done cooking, you have to get rid of all that extra water. I did it the first time with a ladle (too slow!), the second time using a sieve (better, but you definitely need two people to do it that way), and most recently, J just shifted the lid of the crock pot slightly and then tilted the bowl so the water drained out the slit. If you have the muscles, that was the quickest way to do it
This is why you have to drain them! Isn't this disgusting? Bleh!
Dump the beans into a big bowl and go to town with your mixer! Once they’re blended, all you have to do is season them to taste and then you’re done! The beans on their own are super bland (I suspect putting seasonings on them while they cook doesn’t do much to flavor them, but I do it anyhow). We like our beans kind of spicy, so we dump in a bunch of salsa, more salt, and sometimes some extra taco seasoning. Mix it all up, and that’s it! (See, I said it was easy!) We stick some of it in the fridge for immediate use and put the rest in the freezer for later (this recipe makes about 10 cups of beans).
MUCH more delicious looking!
The Results
Obviously we liked the way they beans came out, because we’ve made them multiple times since then They’re just as tasty as the kind you buy at the store, but what I like best about this recipe is that beans are incredibly cheap (it was about 60 cents for the pinto beans when I bought them in the bulk section of the store) and incredibly healthy in every way! Except for the salt (which I know, I use to excess!) there’s not a bad thing for you in this recipe! (I realized at some point that there is no frying involved in this recipe, so it seems weird to call them refried beans. Any new title suggestions? And why are they called that, anyhow? Did people originally actually fry the beans in oil? Why would they do that?) In any case, since I’m always concerned with the balance between the cost of food versus the nutritional content of it, and we go through a lot of beans, that is a win-win recipe for us
Has anybody else tried a variation that I might like better than this? Let me know, I’d love to try it!
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