Quick & Easy Homemade Refried Beans Recipe

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Cooking With Anadi

12K subscribers · pinto beans mashed creamy with cumin, oregano and broth

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I’ll not lie to you - refried beans is actually a dish I’ve avoided for such a long time!

Why are you asking this? Well, I had a bad experience once at a sub-par Mexican restaurant with refried beans not too long after I came to Canada and I was really scared. After many years passed, as I tend to do with food I shun, I decided to give refried beans another chance, and I actually totally loved them!

Cinco de Mayo is fast approaching and if Mexican cuisine is new to you and you’d like to explore it more, I definitely recommend using these quick refried beans from canned pinto beans as a starting point to make Mexico no longer a destination unseen as part of your Live to Cook one-month challenge! Refried beans open so many doors to other Mexican recipes as a side dish or for topping, and I’ll be sharing plenty of serving suggestions later on in this post so you use up those refried beans in a heartbeat!

To follow along with the steps on how to make quick refried beans at home healthy and delicious, be sure to watch the video! If you’re not already, please subscribe to the channel and hit the bell button so you’re notified when all of my video recipes are live! Let’s get cooking!

How to Make Refried Beans More Flavorful?

One way to make refried beans more flavorful is to take the extra time to cook the beans fresh and add some aromatics to the water, such as bay leaf, star anise, garlic, tomatoes, cloves to the cooking water. This will help impart a lot of flavor on the beans. However, because the idea behind this recipe is to make the refried beans quickly, we’re going to have to use the canned beans.

You can also add cilantro for a fresh zest, add cheddar cheese to the beans or make things spicy and smoky with some chopped up hot chipotle peppers to the beans.

Tools Needed

• Nonstick pan
• Wooden spoon
• Cutting board
• Chef's knife
• Measuring spoons
• Colander
• Spatula

Ingredients for Quick Refried Beans

There are only a handful of ingredients that you most likely already have to make the best Quick Refried Beans!! All ingredients and their quantities can be found by scrolling to the bottom of this post or pressing the “Jump to Recipe” button for the FULL PRINTABLE recipe card. You can also use the recipe card to scale the recipe based on how many portions of Quick Refried Beans you want to make!

• Olive oil: To help cook the onions and garlic.
• Onions: Finely diced.
• Garlic: Minced garlic cloves.
• Canned pinto beans: Rinse the beans well because the juices from the can are really gross!
• Spices: Ground cumin and dried oregano.
• Chicken broth: Use vegetable broth to make this for vegetarians and vegans. I prefer the flavor of chicken broth, but feel free to substitute if needed! As I describe in my free motivational guide to explore your potential in the kitchen, Make Cooking Fun!!, if there’s a suitable substitute that you already have on hand, then go ahead and use it instead.
• Lime juice: To add some freshness to the beans.
• Salt and pepper: Always use these to taste.

How to Make Healthy Refried Beans

If using dried beans, cook them separately with 4 times the amount of water, bay leaf, salt, pepper and star anise. Reserve the cooking water if using dried beans. Otherwise, for canned beans, drain the beans well and rinse. Set aside for now.

Heat a pan on medium heat, add olive oil and once warm add onions with a pinch of salt. Cook until onions start to soften, about 4-5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant and then add the dried spices.

Sauté the spices for 2-3 minutes and then add the cooked beans. Cook for 5-8 minutes to help meld the flavors together, stir every so often.

Add chicken/vegetable broth or the bean cooking water, stir, and bring it up to a simmer. Start mashing the beans and cook down the liquid until it has reduced at least by half. Continue mashing as the liquid evaporates and until the beans reach a thick consistency. Avoid mashing it to a complete puree.

Season and adjust for salt and pepper, add lime juice and serve.

Serving Suggestions for Quick Refried Beans

Refried Beans are a delicious side dish or topping to plenty of Mexican recipes! Here are some ideas:

• Tostadas (recipe coming soon)
• Tacos: Like my Crispy Chicken & Shrimp Tacos
• Quesadillas: Try it in the Ultimate Cheesy Beef Quesadilla
• Burritos
• Toast
• Eggs: Huevos Ranchos or Scrambled Eggs (in a burrito, if desired).

Storing Refried Beans

You can keep your refried beans in the fridge for up to one week in an airtight container. The great news about refried beans is that they are easy to freeze and defrost well! You can keep your refried beans in the freezer for up to 3 months. For best results, transfer the refried beans into portion-sized containers so that this can make defrosting easy in the microwave. Otherwise, if you’ve put all the refried beans in a lump in one container, you should defrost the refried beans overnight in the fridge for easier reheating.

To reheat, you can do this quickly in the microwave. Reheat in 30 second intervals and stir occasionally to ensure they are evenly warmed through. You could also reheat over the stove by pouring the refried beans in a saucepan and heat on low heat. You may need to add some extra water to thin out the refried beans.

Dried Beans, Canned Beans and the Bean-Cooking Liquid

The whole point of this version is speed, and canned pinto beans get you there — just drain beans well and rinse them properly, because the starchy liquid in the can tastes of the can. If you are starting from dried beans instead, the recipe has you cook them separately in a large pot with four times their volume of water plus bay leaf, star anise, salt and pepper. Soaking them overnight first cuts the cooking time roughly in half, and an Instant Pot on high pressure gets you there faster still. Whichever route you take, save a cup of the bean broth. That bean-cooking liquid is where a lot of the flavour has ended up, and using it in place of the 2 cups of chicken broth is the single easiest upgrade to this dish. Black beans work exactly the same way if that is what is in the cupboard — they mash a little firmer and the finished beans come out darker, but nothing else about the method changes.

Potato Masher or Immersion Blender?

A potato masher is the right tool here, and it is worth being deliberate with it: mash as the liquid reduces, and stop while there is still some texture left. The recipe says it outright — avoid mashing to a complete puree — because the difference between good refried beans and baby food is a handful of whole beans left in the pan. An immersion blender will get you smooth in about ten seconds, which is useful if you are making a bean dip rather than a side dish, but it is very easy to overshoot. If you go that route, blitz half the pan and stir it back through the rest.

Extra Flavor: What to Add and Why

This recipe sticks to simple ingredients — 1 1/2 tbsp olive oil, onion, garlic, 2 tsp ground cumin, 1 tsp dried oregano, broth and a squeeze of lime juice at the end. If you want more depth than that, here is where it comes from.

The traditional secret ingredient is fat. Mexican refried beans are classically cooked in lard, and a spoonful of bacon fat used in place of some of the olive oil does the same job — savoury, rounded and unmistakably richer. A knob of butter stirred in at the end is the milder version of the same idea.

Smoked paprika, about half a teaspoon alongside the cumin, brings smoke without adding heat.

A finely chopped jalapeño pepper cooked along with the onion gives you heat that builds gently rather than bites.

A white onion rather than a yellow one is the standard choice in Mexican kitchens — sharper raw, cleaner once it has softened.

Fresh cilantro stirred through right at the end, along with the lime juice, keeps the whole pan tasting bright instead of heavy.

Serving: From Bean Dip to Huevos Rancheros