There is going to be a lot of food content in the near future. It is partially because I am cooking a lot, partially because it is harvest time and I have to take advantage of that and partially because I haven’t done much in the past year. Aside from running kids around and sorting through junk this is the one thing that is going on in my life.

Some friends brought us over a meal the other night. It was black beans, chicken and tortillas with salsa. I would call it basically burrito fixings. We ate on it a couple of times. But I can’t get my kids to eat the same thing more than twice in a row, so a big container of beans sat in the back of the refrigerator for a week. And the reality is one of my son’s is vegan this month so he wont eat anything that is unknown origin so it was just the two of us eating all this food.

I got really introduced to beans when I started hanging out with my wife. As a child, we would open a can of refried beans and make burritos about once a month. We didn’t go out to eat much and we just weren’t really exposed to the different preparations. Somewhere in that journey, I was introduced to repurposing whole beans into refried beans. I just never gave it much thought. Mind you, this is really a leftover technique, which is right up my alley.

Have you ever gone to a Mexican restaurant and had tasty beans? It is pretty rare. Most of the time, the stale tasting beans pairs nicely with the crappy, bland rice and pour excuse for fiesta food. They lack salt and depth normally, the only thing that fixes the situation would be some fiery hot salsa so that you cannot taste them. OK, I am going to stop bashing Mexican restaurants now.

Why is that? What is going wrong? There are two things, one is that no one is tasting as time goes on. The other is that there is nothing going into the beans to make them taste any better. It is very simple to take beans from meh to great.

Sometimes, if I have leftover pico de gallo, I will add that. In this case, I added a small tomato and a little bit of onion and a clove of garlic. I also added a heavy spoon of bacon grease. There is no real recipe for this however, think about proportions. If you open one can of beans, then I would say about a 1/8 cup of additions. is about right.

Add additional water to the mixture and boil the heck out of it. The object is to boil the raw ingredients until they disintegrate and are easy to mash. You also need to keep boiling off all of the extra water, so don’t carried away with adding too much water. After boiling for a bit, start mashing the mixture. Then, taste for salt and adjust accordingly.

You can always add more water and keep boiling if things aren’t as soft as you would like it. When I was done, I put the beans into a bowl and got a little heavy handed with the Feta (I was trying to get rid of the container and it had more than I realized). That is it. No cheese is necessary but for more authentic touch, use Cotija.

Other variations substitute olive oil for bacon grease or even skip it altogether. The bacon fat add smokiness and the fat in general adds to the texture to the beans. Sometimes I will add a little cumin. I like my beans a little coarser than puree so the masher works well, but an immersion blender would have a more uniform mix.

End Your Programming Routine: If you don’t like beans, it is probably because you haven’t had them done well. I really like them for breakfast with eggs and fried potatoes and a little bit of Cholula on them. I like them in my breakfast burrito as well. Another thing I discovered earlier this year was to put them on the bottom layer of a tostada. It will keep the giant chip from breaking up when you take the first bite.