Frijoles Refritos - (Don't Call 'em Re-Fried) Beans | Rick Bayless Taco Manual

let me show you how to make the perfect Frijoles refritos [Music] hello everybody and welcome back to my kitchen the next page in our Taco manual takes us to what I consider to be the most important accompaniment to go with all these beautiful tacos that you guys are making out there so let's talk about Frijoles refritos fried beans well fried beans or what a lot of people call them refried beans there's nothing real about them Rey is a prefix in Spanish that just means done really well so that's why I often call them well fried beans first we got to talk about beans and how you cook them or what you buy so let's talk first about how you cook them here I've got one pound of small black beans that's a generous two cups sometimes if they're bigger beans it'll be like two and a half cups if you're using pintos or some of the red beans or something like that but you can use any kind of bean that appeals to you I love black beans so that's what I'm doing here today okay so the first thing you do is rinse them off and you pick over them for some rocks most of the beans that we get today are very clean so you're probably not going to find any of that debris in the beans and then you cook them in one of basically two ways you're going to be on the stove top or you're going to be in a pressure cooker so for one pound of beans you're going to put two and a half cups of liquid if you're cooking it on the stove top if you're doing it in my handy dandy instant pot pressure cooker here you're going to put two quarts of water just a half a quart less because there's no evaporation there and then you're going to bring everything to a simmer and you're going to simmer or pressure cook one hour in the pressure cooker two hours more or less on the stove top very low heat barely a simmer to let these guys go should you soak your beans overnight man that's up to you they don't do it in Mexico you don't have to do it they will cook quicker and a lot of times people will say that if you pour off the liquid and start with new liquid after soaking them overnight they'll be more digestible truth of the matter is beans will be more digestible if you eat more beans plain and simple okay people don't talk about digestibility in countries where they eat a lot of beans but we don't eat them much in the United States so we have to deal with that issue okay so now we've got our finished beans here if you're doing it in the pressure cooker then just let it go off and naturally reduce that steam over the next 20 minutes or so um but don't do a very quick release of the steam okay we've got our cooked beans here on stovetop oh I put this clay one over here because someone gave me that it's a beautiful piece a very traditional stove top bean pot there are many different styles of these all over Mexico and maybe you travel to Mexico you go to a market you see one and you want to bring that back they will impart a really beautiful earthiness to the flavor of the beans okay now we need to look here and see what the consistency of these beans is here so we've just got enough of the juice to just barely cover them that's where we want to start you will have about six cups of beans here something let's say about seven cups of beans so this is the point at which we have to stop and say okay I'm never going to be doing my beans from scratch so talk to me about what I can buy in a can because canned beans are perfectly perfectly fine so they are coming now in cans as well as pouches usually 15 ounces in each one of those and they won't have as much juice as this but for this recipe to equal about a pound of beans a pound of dry beans that we started with you'll need about three cans or three pouches you could go three and a half four if you wanted to for the same recipe that I'm making now but I'm basically basting it on a one pound of dried beans recipe here okay next thing that I have to do I've cooked these without any salt most people will tell you to do that but there are people who will definitely say that's not the way to go put the salt in from the very beginning you'll have to decide I'm kind of split on it I've done it both ways and I can't tell a lot of difference but these don't have any salt in them so I'm putting two heaping teaspoons of this flake salt in there I'm going to let that cook in with them because it takes a little while for the beans to absorb that salt I'm going to let that cook while I do my prep for the next stage for the making the Frijoles refritos I'm going to chop up this onion and I'm going to dice the or I'm gonna very finely mince the garlic for this recipe thank you foreign vegetables are prepped now and now's the moment that we talk about fat so you can use anything that you want fat wise to make your frijole refritos anything from vegetable oil that'll give it a neutral kind of flavor to the fresh rendered pork lard I'm going to encourage you not to buy the hydrogenated stuff that you find on the grocery store shelves it doesn't have it's it's harmful to you but it also doesn't have any flavor so fresh rendered pork lard or what I'm going to be using today which is really my absolute favorite here and that is bacon drippings the fat from cooking bacon now the quantity that you're going to use here is about a quarter of a cup that's what you're looking for but I will say that there's a lot of controversy as to how fatty these should be in some places in Mexico they like lots of fat in them in other places they like them to be a little bit leaner and soupier so you're going to have to figure out your way through all of this I've got this now over about a medium high heat just to start here and then I'm going to add all of the chopped onion we're going to cook that until it completely softens and starts to brown browning to me is key here for developing flavor and then we'll add our garlic for a minute or so and start to add the beans to it oh [Music] okay we are ready to start now adding the beans to this I'm going to turn that fire off completely and then bring the beans a little closer here and with a slotted spoon start to add them to this pan I'm doing it with a slotted spoon so I'm not getting any of the juice right now I will add that a little bit later but I'm going to use the old-fashioned potato masher to do my mashing I will tell you that it works really beautifully if you live near a Mexican grocery store or travel to Mexico a lot then you can buy the bean Masher in those places but this old-fashioned potato masher works just as good and now you have to make the decision as to what you're going to do for consistency here if you were in Oaxaca or you would have put these beans straight into a blender jar and made a pasta as they would call it out of it a paste out of it I like the Frijoles refritos to have some texture so I don't really work them in here and you'll notice that I like a lot of onions and garlic in the Frijoles you could do less if that suits your taste okay now we've got these all nicely mixed in here so now I'm going to put the rest of the beans in I usually do it in a couple three different additions just so that I get started with the the beans now of course if it's easier for you to pour these beans into a colander set over a bowl then you've got your your finished beans without the liquid then but I think I've got just about where I want there and just a little bit more time mashing and we're going to be done now you may think that this is a lot of Frijoles Fritos and I would agree with you but they freeze beautifully I don't usually make anything less than a whole pound of dried beans at a time but of course you could scale this recipe down if you want to they freeze beautifully they're great to have in the refrigerator for a week or so one of my favorite I'm going to call it light meals slash snacks is to heat a tortilla up smear it with black beans put queso fresco over it and add a little salsa it's just or even Mexican hot sauce it's just so good and it's so good for you as well so I'm getting to the point where I like the texture you'll notice that you'll see whole beans still in here a few whole beans in here but I really like this kind of a texture for it now one thing that you have to know well a couple things you might have to know number one is when I was cooking these beans you saw that I had it partially covered if you don't have it covered then the liquid will evaporate too fast always check every 15-20 minutes or so while you're boiling beans or simmering beans I should say that the liquid is still above the level of the beans and if you see beans peeking up add a little bit more hot water to it so it comes right back to a simmer and now that I've got these cooked to this stage they're perfect to smear on a Taco before you put your filling on there but I will tell you these will thicken up super fast so you want your beans to be runnier juicier and so I'm going to pour actually all of this all this juice because I only have like about a cup full in there I'm going to put that all in there and stir it in it'll loosen them up really fast but then I can let this simmer for a little bit more or as they cool a little bit I can just wait for them to naturally thicken let's put that over there towel down there I'm going to move these beans over in front of you here and I will tell you that's the way I like to serve them when I'm serving tacos I leave them in the skillet that I cooked them in this is a beautiful cast iron skillet this one has the added advantage that I can put this top on it like that and keep them warm for quite a long time because cast iron holds heat really beautifully and then when it comes time to serve I can either return them to the Heat and give them a little boost there or I can if they're still warm just uncover them and let everybody help themselves I hope this helps you when you're planning to serve tacos to know a few things about serving Frijoles with them because it's an absolute magical accompaniment [Music]

Channel: Rick Bayless

Views: 212,473

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Id: sm-E36ROnDo

Length: 13min 51sec (831 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 26 2023