In episode 106 instead of a dinner entrée we are making a killer side dish- Instant Pot Refried Beans. It is an incredibly inexpensive dish to make that is also super easy to make! A pound of dry refried beans will usually be under $3. This recipe makes super creamy and flavorful refried beans.
Serve it up on the side with some Mexican Rice and you will have an amazing dinner.
Transcript
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Intro: Welcome, welcome everybody to another episode of Let’s Make Dinner, your audio library of amazing dinner recipes you can always get on the table. I’m your host, Susie Weinrich.
Susie Weinrich: Beans, beans, the magical fruit. Is it magical or musical? I always said it was the magical fruit, but then somebody on Instagram had a post where they said musical fruit, which would make sense because it’s talking about farts.
Welcome to this episode of Let’s Make Dinner. Alright, so you guessed it. Today we are making a bean dish. We’re making Instant Pot Refried Beans. If you have never made your own refried beans, if you’ve been intimidated or you’ve tried to make them and they don’t really turn out, this is a fool proof, fool poof, fool proof recipe for refried beans that you make in your instant pot, which is so great because it’s mostly hands off and they’re so delicious when I make them, I eat them straight out of the Instant Pot, and then I regret it later because I have a stomach ache.
Tips and Tricks: Okay, so not a ton of tips and tricks here. The Instant Pot that I use is a 6 quart Instant Pot, and so I will link that for you in the show notes. If you don’t have an Instant Pot, I highly recommend getting one. I love my instant pot, especially in the fall when I’m making soups or large cuts of meat like pot roast or shredded beef or shredded pork, anything like that, it is just wonderful for.
Instant Pot Refried Bean Recipe: So let’s go ahead and just get straight into the recipe for your Instant Pot Refried Beans. We are going to start this recipe by taking care of the pinto beans. That is what refried beans are made of. So you need one pound of dry pinto beans. What you want to do is just put those dry pinto beans into a mesh sieve or a colander and give them a really good rinse. If there’s any stems or any weird pieces in there, take those out. and then you can just set them aside.
Now you need to grab your instant pot and we’re going to pop that onto saute mode and you’re going to add three tablespoons of olive oil or you could use a vegetable oil that would work here as well. Then once that’s nice and warm you’re going to saute one white onion, four garlic cloves, and one jalapeno. All of those can just be roughly chopped because they’re going to be pureed down later on.
So saute those for about four to five minutes just to start to enhance their flavors and get them softening. After that, you’re going to add in one tablespoon of chicken base. Chicken base is like a paste form of bouillon and you can find it in the soup aisle. It’s a way more flavorful option than regular bouillon, and we love the brand, it’s actually called Better Than Bouillon. Okay. So that’s a great one to look for in the grocery store.
Then you’re also going to add two teaspoons of chili powder, two teaspoons of cumin. One teaspoon each of onion powder and kosher salt. Just give that all a stir so that it coats the onions and garlic and jalapeno.
Next, you’re going to pour in four cups of chicken broth or stock and one and a half cups of water. If you have any bits that have browned to the bottom of the Instant Pot, you want to scrape those up at this point. Now you can turn off that sauté mode and you can add in those rinsed, dry pinto beans and one bay leaf. Now give everything a really good stir.
Now we’re going to get to the cooking part. You’re going to close the lid on the Instant Pot. Make sure you set that pressure valve to seal. You’re going to set it to cook on just your manual normal pressure cook, high pressure, normal heat for 50 minutes. Then at the end of the 50 minutes, you’re going to do a 15 minute natural pressure release and then finish with a quick release.
Now once you open up your Instant Pot, if some of the very top layer of beans didn’t stay down in the liquid, some of those may have a little crunch or a little dryness to them still. You can skim off that top layer of beans and just use the beans that cooked really well and soft down in the liquid.
At this point, you also want to remove the bay leaf and discard that. Now, some recipes will have you draining the liquid off the beans and then adding it back. We don’t need to do that. There is the perfect amount of liquid in the beans so that they puree up really, oh my gosh, so creamy and so good. You are absolutely going to love these.
So what I like to do is actually use my immersion blender and just start to puree everything up. We like our refried beans really smooth, so I puree them until they are creamy and smooth. If you don’t have an immersion blender and you like your refried beans a little bit more chunky, you could just use a handheld potato masher. But if you do like the smooth consistency and you don’t have that immersion blender, you can transfer the beans and the liquid to either a food processor, or a food mill, or a really strong blender. If you’re using the blender, make sure that the beans and the liquid are slightly cooled before you add them, or your blender may explode. No worries. Your Instant Pot’s not going to explode, but your blender might explode.
Okay. So once you’ve got them pureed up, you’re going to squeeze some fresh lime juice into the beans. I usually like to do one small lime and I just squeeze the entire thing in, stir it up, and then give it a taste. See if you want a little more kosher salt. Do you want a little more lime juice? Do you want a little more spice? At this point, if you like them a little bit more spicy, I would put in a couple dashes of cayenne pepper.
So the trick is with your refried beans, if you want to serve them immediately, once they’re sitting, they will start to thicken up and firm up and then the top will also dry out. So if you do need to hold them for a little bit, I recommend putting a little plastic wrap right on top of those beans so it doesn’t get that dry layer on top. So of course, refried beans go excellent with any Mexican dinner. So you’re talking tacos, burritos, enchiladas, quesadillas. Think about when you go to a Mexican restaurant, and the side dish is usually rice and beans. So that’s where we like to serve these. I’ll tell you what, these refried beans, leftover, they’re thick and delicious, and they make the most killer refried bean burrito, ever. So you can use the leftovers for that too because this does make quite a few beans. I will link some delicious Mexican dinner recipes in the show notes for you as well so that you can have something to pair these refried beans with.
Outro: So that does it for the full recipe and as always I hope this episode of Let’s Make Dinner makes your dinner time a little easier. See ya!
Double Dip: All right, everybody. Thank you so much for sticking around. Now it’s time for your double dip. Every week I share the recipe that we will be making next Thursday on the podcast so that you can have all of the ingredients ready and cook along with me next week. So we will be making a Marinated Grilled Tri Tip with mustard Butter next week.
This is a great recipe as the temperatures start to cool and you’re ready to get out and cook on your grill again. So for this recipe next week, you’re going to need a 2 to 3 pound beef tri tip, 2 tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce, some extra virgin olive oil, 2 garlic cloves, smoked paprika, onion powder, brown sugar, kosher salt, and a coarse ground black pepper.
Then for the mustard butter, you only need three ingredients and you probably already have all of them. Salted butter, Dijon mustard, and black pepper. So, basically what we’re doing is we are marinating a tri tip and you can marinate it in the morning and then cook it in the evening or you can marinate it on Thursday and grill it on Friday for dinner.
The mustard butter can also be made ahead of time, so if you want to make that in the morning and have it for dinner in the evening, or you can make it on Thursday and have it ready in the fridge for dinner on Friday. But that is all you need. So I hope you will join me then. But until that episode, I hope you guys have a wonderful week ahead.
Recipes & Equipment Mentioned
- Instant Pot 6 quart
- Immersion Blender
- Instant Pot Refried Beans
- Easy Mexican Rice
- All Mexican Recipes
Next Week
I hope you will join us every Thursday for a new episode. Next week we are making Marinated Grilled Tri Tip Steak.
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