Recipe: Homemade Refried Beans

My friend Cydnee is a cooking genius.

She's developed a wonderful recipe for refried beans using dry pinto beans -- yes, I am talking about all of those beans sitting in your food storage!

There's no lard, no fat, and you stick everything in the crock pot and that's it!  My kind of recipe.  She is working on developing a black bean recipe so stay tuned.

Homemade Refried Beans: by Cydnee Schroder 

Ingredients:

4 cups dry pinto beans, rinsed
1 onion chopped
1 fresh jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped finely
3 T minced garlic
1 T salt
2 t ground pepper
½ t cumin
8 cups water (You can use 4 cups water and 4 cups chicken broth for more flavor)
(I add in 1 heaping Tablespoon of dry Fajita seasoning just for extra flavor)

Directions:
--  Place all the ingredients into a slow cooker and stir to combine.
--  Cook on high for 8 hours.
--  Once the beans have cooked, beat them with an immersion blender inside the crock pot (be careful not to splatter yourself with hot beans) until they look like refried beans (about 5 min.)  If they are too thick, you can add a little water in at this point to make them runnier.
--  Use what you need for dinner that night and freeze the rest in freezer bags for up to 3 months.


Tip:  The only fresh item is the jalepeno peppers -- which I do not normally keep on hand.  I keep a few extra diced and frozen so I can make this on a whim.

ENJOY!