Frijoles Refritos Sonorenses con Manteca

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •12-inch cast-iron skillet or wide clay cazuela
• •Heavy stockpot or clay olla for cooking the beans
• •Bean masher or sturdy wooden spoon
• •Fine-mesh colander set over a large bowl, to save the broth

Instructions

1. 1

   Sort and soak the beans

   Spread the dried pintos on a sheet pan and pick out any small stones, broken beans, or shriveled ones. The bag will have at least one. Rinse under cold water. Cover with cool water by three inches and soak for six hours or overnight. The bean swells, the cook time drops, and the texture turns creamy instead of chalky. Sonoran cooks soak. No me vengas con atajos.

2. 2

   Cook the beans low and slow

   Drain the soaked beans and transfer to a heavy pot or, better, a clay olla if you have one. Cover with fresh cold water by two inches. Add the whole half onion, the smashed garlic, and the epazote if you are using it. Bring to a gentle simmer over medium heat. Skim the gray foam in the first ten minutes. Lower the heat until the surface barely moves. Cover partially and cook for one and a half to two hours, until the beans are tender all the way through and the broth has turned a soft pink-brown.

   Salt at the end, not the beginning. Salt added too early can make the skins tough. Add the tablespoon of salt in the last fifteen minutes of cooking and taste the broth. The broth should taste like food, not like water.
3. 3

   Save the broth, fish out the aromatics

   Pull the spent onion half, the garlic, and the epazote stems out and discard them. Drain the beans through a colander set over a bowl. Keep every drop of that bean broth. You will need it to loosen the refritos as you fry them. Cooks who pour the broth down the drain are starting from a deficit.

4. 4

   Render the lard and sweat the onion

   In a wide cast-iron skillet or a heavy 12-inch cazuela, melt the manteca over medium heat until it shimmers. Half a cup looks like too much. It is not. La manteca es el sabor. Vegetable oil will not do this work. Add the diced onion and the crushed chiltepin if you are using it. Cook, stirring, for five to seven minutes, until the onion is soft and translucent and the lard smells sweet. The chiltepin will perfume the fat without dominating it.

5. 5

   Add the beans and start smashing

   Add the drained beans to the skillet by the heaping cupful, stirring after each addition so they coat in the seasoned lard. When all the beans are in, lower the heat to medium-low. Take a bean masher or the back of a sturdy wooden spoon and start smashing. Work the beans against the bottom and sides of the skillet. You are not making a puree. You want a rough, chunky paste with whole beans still scattered through it. Sonoran refritos have texture. The smooth canned version is something else entirely.

   If you want them silkier, blend half the beans before smashing them in. If you want them rustic, smash them all by hand in the pan. Both are correct. Asi se hace y punto.
6. 6

   Fry, fold, loosen, repeat

   Now you fry them. Spread the smashed beans across the skillet so the surface area touches the hot lard. Let them sit for a minute until you hear them sizzle and see the bottom catch. Fold the crisped layer back into the rest with the spoon. Spread again. Fold again. Each fold pulls a little more flavor out of the lard and into the beans. Loosen with a splash of the reserved bean broth whenever the paste tightens up too much. You are looking for the consistency of a thick, glossy spread that holds the line of the spoon for a moment before settling back.

7. 7

   Taste, finish, and serve

   Taste for salt. Beans absorb salt, so the seasoning has to be assertive or the whole skillet will read flat. Adjust. If the beans look dry, add another spoonful of lard. If they look stiff, more bean broth. Pull the skillet off the heat and scatter the crumbled queso Chihuahua across the top so it softens against the warm beans. Serve straight from the skillet with a stack of warm flour tortillas. In Sonora, the tortilla is the spoon. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.

Chef Tips

• •Use real manteca de cerdo from a Mexican carniceria or rendered yourself from pork fatback. The shelf-stable hydrogenated lard in the white tub at the supermarket is not the same product. It tastes like nothing. If you cannot find good lard, render your own from a pound of pork fat over low heat in an afternoon. You will have lard for months.
• •Chiltepin is the wild chile of Sonora and Chihuahua and there is no substitute that captures its dry, sharp heat. If you cannot find it, leave it out before reaching for cayenne or red pepper flakes. A bad substitution is a compromise, not an upgrade.
• •These beans get better the next day. Make a double batch, refrigerate half, and reheat in a skillet with a fresh spoonful of lard. The flavor deepens and the texture tightens up beautifully.
• •If you serve these with corn tortillas, you have made a fine plate of beans. If you want a Sonoran plate of beans, you serve them with flour. Hand-pressed, large, thin, with the brown freckle of the comal across the surface. The flour tortilla is northern. Asi se hace y punto.

Advance Preparation

• •The cooked beans (before frying) can be made up to three days ahead and refrigerated in their broth. Reheat gently, then proceed with the frying step.
• •Fully refried beans keep refrigerated for four days and reheat well in a skillet with a fresh spoonful of lard and a splash of water or broth to loosen.
• •Refried beans freeze for up to two months in a tightly sealed container. Thaw in the refrigerator overnight and reheat over low heat with a little extra lard.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 180g)