Refried Beans

by Vicki Reich, from the June 2004 Newsletter

Cinco de Mayo put thoughts of tortillas, salsa, tamales, chilies and refried beans in my head. I love Mexican food. I make Mexican-influenced meals all the time, and I almost always use some kind of salsa and refried beans. Regular readers of this column know that we’ve already tested salsas, so it seemed like it was frijoles refritos' turn to face the taste buds of the Hog Heaven Handspinners.

Refried beans aren’t really fried twice, only once. They are traditionally made by frying cooked beans in lard with onion and sometimes garlic. A great deal of lard is used in the traditional recipes I’ve seen, and the beans are fried and mashed until they resemble mashed potatoes. The term refritos really means well fried not re-fried.

All the refries the Co-op carries are vegetarian and low fat, so they are not very traditional, but they are still tasty. The spinners’ job was to find which of the four brands taste the best. They were more excited about tasting beans than I expected. I was surprised by the overwhelmingly positive response when I said the next taste test would be refried beans. Who knew others liked refries as much as I did.

I like refried black beans the best, so that’s what we tasted. Amy’s ($1.85/15.4oz) was the first into the bowl. The consistency of these beans is great, not too thin, not too thick but just right, and the flavor follows right along with the consistency. They are very smooth and light and taste like they’ve got a bit of salsa added (which they kind of do; there’s added onion, peppers, tomato, chilies, garlic and spices.) This was definitely the favorite.

Next up was Natural Value ($1.35/16 oz.). These are just straight black beans. They are thick and slightly tangy and taste just like you would think mushed up black beans should taste. They have just the right amount of salt and would make a good base for a bean dish. Bearitos ($1.39/16 oz.) is also just black beans with a little bit of canola oil. They have a thick velvety consistency, but they have a slight metallic taste that some of us didn’t like. Walnut Acres ($1.49/15 oz.) was the last brand we tried. This is the thinnest in consistency of the lot. It is very mild tasting even though it has roasted red jalapenos added. Some tasters thought it had a hint of garlic.

There are lots of other choices of refries within these brands, but we didn’t have time or stomach space to try them all. All of them are made with organic beans, and they are all either fat free or low fat. There was much going back for second and third tastes, and we almost didn’t have room for dessert, almost.

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