Refry Canned Beans For A Restaurant Quality Side Dish Without The Wait

While making refried beans from scratch is easy, it does takes time. In Mexican households, beans are often on the stovetop, simmering away slowly until they are soft and creamy, swimming in a thick, aromatic broth. After enjoying them for a couple of days, Mexican cooks frequently refry them to prevent them from spoiling, using them as a side for egg dishes, grilled meats, or as a spread on a variety of snacks. Here, we often rely on the convenience of canned refried beans, but if you find their texture and flavor unsatisfactory, here's another alternative: Use canned whole beans and refry them yourself with onion and spices to get a much better end product.

Simply mince some onion and saute it in a large frying pan. Once it starts getting fragrant and translucent, add the whole beans straight from the can, liquid and all, and let them heat up and thicken a bit. Season them to your taste with salt and spices, then use your favorite potato masher to get them to your desired consistency — you can leave them a bit chunky if you want extra texture or mash them all the way to a smooth puree. Voilá, you have restaurant quality refried beans in a fraction of the time.

When refrying canned whole beans, you can use a neutral vegetable oil to keep them vegetarian or add extra flavor as we do in Mexico by using bacon fat, good quality lard, or chorizo oil (chorizo and beans are a match made in heaven, by the way). Pinto and black beans are the types most commonly used in restaurants, but step outside the box and try creamy peruano beans, which are extremely popular in Mexico these days. If you can find it, add a sprig of epazote when simmering the beans for an extra traditional Mexican taste.

There are various ingredients you can add to enhance the flavor and texture of your refried beans, especially when using canned whole beans that you haven't had the chance to season yourself. Depending on how you intend to use your quick refried beans (as a side dish, as a topping for nachos, as a filling for tacos or burritos, or as a spread on molletes for breakfast, tortas for lunch, or sopes for a late night snack), flavor them with chile powder and ground cumin, or add some adobo from a can of chipotles for an extra spicy kick. Keep a few cans of whole beans in the pantry, and you'll be able to whip up restaurant quality refried beans in a flash.