I'm thinking about beans today because I have some beans in the slow cooker. I put them in first thing this morning and, as I write my dissertation during the rest of today, they'll be on their way to becoming refried beans. So they're on my mind, and their smell is going to be wafting into my office all day, and becoming stronger as the day goes on.
I like to cook. And I like to look at a lot of recipes before I finally settle on a recipe, or combination of recipes, to use when cooking a dish. My beans recipe is based on a lot of trial and error, cook book and internet recipe perusing, and advice from my Mexican mother-in-law. Lately, a few people have told me that they have trouble making good, soft beans for their refried beans. So I though I would share some of what I have learned from trying and adapting the different recipes into my own.
1. Make time for the slow soak. Some recipes suggest that the slow soak is optional and present an alternative, quick soak method for cooking beans. The quick soak does work. And if you're in a hurry to make some beans, go ahead and use this method (although it will still take all day to cook the beans, so you haven't really saved yourself much time). Now, as effective as the quick soak is, I think that the flavor does suffer a bit. So plan ahead. Measure out a pound of dry pinto beans (about 2 1/2 cups), rinse and sort them, and put them in a large pot or bowl. Cover them with at least a couple inches of water (more water won't hurt them, and it's better to use more than less). Cover the pot with a lid or some plastic wrap and let them sit overnight. The beans will soak up the water and grow to 2-3 times their dry size. And they'll have done it slowly without losing any of their flavor.
2. Use a slow cooker. You don't need a slow cooker. But if you have one, it is really handy for this recipe since it is going to take several hours to cook. Discard your soaking water, rinse your beans once again until the rinsing water runs clear, and place the beans in the bottom of your slow cooker.
3. Add a few things for flavor, but NO SALT. One mistake that I have seen in a lot of recipes -- even ones with very good online reviews -- is that they recommend adding salt (sometimes a lot of salt) to the beans in the beginning of cooking. I don't know why they would recommend this, because it will definitely keep your beans from becoming soft and silky. They will retain some of their chalky texture if you add salt early on. Save the salt for seasoning after the beans have cooked.
What I add to the beans for flavor is the following: 1 diced white onion (for Mexican cooking, white onions are almost always preferred), 4-5 minced cloves of garlic, a few sprigs of thyme, 1 bay leaf, 3-4 dried chiles de arbol, and one small can of diced green chiles. I put all of this in the slow cooker with the beans from the beginning. You might also consider using jalapenos, cumin, oregano, or chile powder, depending on your preferences. (Some recipes I've read suggest cutting your onion in half and putting the halves into the slow cooker without dicing, and then removing the halves in-tact once the beans have finished cooking. I suppose that this will work, but I personally like having the onions add to the texture of the finished product. The only things I remove at the end of cooking are the chiles de arbol, the bay leaf, and the stems from the thyme.)
4. Pre-boil your water. Some recipes would have you pour water straight from the tap into your slow cooker. However, this is then going to take quite a while to heat up and will potentially add another hour or more to your cooking time. I have found that it is best to boil a medium-sized pot of water on the stove and use this to pour over the ingredients in the slow cooker. This get things going more rapidly. And because you're just boiling clean water, you don't have to wash another pot when the cooking is done.
5. Time. A lot of recipes just get the cooking time wrong. One recipe that I used as the basis for my refried beans recipe is from EatingWell Magazine (reproduced on Cooking.com). This recipe was very helpful in giving me the idea to add thyme and to use pre-boiled water, etc., but it just was way off on the cooking time. They recommend 2 to 3 1/2 hours of cooking on high. But this is at least one hour short of what is actually required. Maybe they're using a super-hot slow cooker (although I already feel like my slow cooker is pretty hot), but this still seems like a large gap. My tip is to get to know your slow cooker. Check the texture of your beans every half-hour or so once they've cooked for 3 1/2 to 4 hours. Overcooking is not a problem with these beans -- in fact, the longer they cook, the better they will be -- so don't worry about it. Undercooking is the problem.
6. You don't need to fry them. Some recipes recommend frying the beans in lard or bacon fat once they are cooked. This is a fine method. But if you are vegetarian, or if you just don't want to get out a frying pan, you can skip this. Like in this recipe, I prefer to simply remove and reserve the excess liquid from the beans using a ladle, mash them (adding some of the reserved liquid back into the beans as I go), and then season them to taste with salt, pepper, and maybe some dried oregano. (I then save the unused bean broth for making soups, or for substitution in anything that might ask for chicken or vegetable stock.) I do not recommend using any type of blender at this point, because you are not making a puree. You want the beans to have an uneven consistency -- smooth but lumpy. Mashing is the best way to achieve this, although I know it is tempting to want to pull out the immersion blender and be done with it. A smooth potato masher like this one is going to be your best friend here; a wire masher is going to make for slow-going because the beans will so easily slip through the gaps. I used to use the wire masher -- it worked, but my arms are happy that I switched to the smooth masher.
That's the end of my allotted time for blogging for today. And that's pretty much the whole story of how I make my refried beans. Maybe I should really quickly try to relate it to Harold Urey. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, one of the ways that Urey paid his way through college in Montana was as a server in the dormitory cafeteria. He remained proud of the fact that he could wait tables, and according to his son he would often show off at parties his ability to carry many plates at once on his arms. He wasn't much of a cook, though. His son also told me that the only thing he cooked were waffles on the holidays. But, anyway, here is a photo I was able to dig up of Urey demonstrating his skills as a server. This is from the UCSD archives (who I hope won't mind if I share this; I will take it down if they object):
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