The Proper Way to Soak and Cook Beans AND My Secret To Perfect Refried Beans

Long before I knew that the quality of a margarita was paramount to the the success of a Mexican restaurant, there was this little place in Memphis called Molly’s La Casita. There may still be a Molly's downtown on Central Ave, though I am not sure if it is open today. We would frequent the Park and Mendenhall location before it shuttered in the early Ninties.



Like the routine loving child that I was, I would always order the exact same thing at Molly's, the Tres Tacos. Three crispy tacos of seasoned ground beef with Mexican red rice and the most ridiculous refried beans imaginable. I can still imagine the taste, but I could not ever find a replacement to them. A nice dark brown color, they were the right balance of meaty and salty. They were ever so slightly pasty but the beans still held their shape creating a balance of texture. They did not reduce to a soupy one note sauce as many lazier restaurants' beans do. Molly's sublime legumes defined refried beans in my mind and virtually all my subsequent encounters with the side dish have been met with abject disappointment.



Recently I have unlocked the secret to these beans, these pearls of protein. Lard.



Yup. Sorry to burst your bubble. You were expecting paprika maybe? Lard is the secret of the best refried beans imaginable. But lard needn’t scare you. It is not any higher in fat than butter or olive oil. And many people are surprised to learn that lard is highest in monounsaturated fats, though it does contain some saturated fat like all fats do. Lard from ethically treated pastured animals is also high in Vitamin D. It is not a fat to be feared. But lard is tricky. Although it is an animal fat many manufacteurers hydrogenate lard to make it more shelf stable. And hydrogenation is bad. So few people are buying and cooking with lard these days that it is much better to render your own. Any butcher could get quality leaf lard for you. I order mine from Lewis-Waite Farm. It freezes well and the rendered fat keeps in the fridge indefinitely. And while my recipe isn’t necessarily authentic (I don’t know, maybe it is! I just kind of made it up), this warm-your-bones side dish is a great accompaniment to a lean meat dish!







Refried Beans

2 pounds of dried pinto beans, or a combination of pinto and kidney beans

Salt to taste (I used around 1-2 tablespoon)

1/4-1/3 cup of rendered leaf lard

Optional sliced onion, garlic, cumin, paprika and black pepper



Stay with me...the following recipe is longer than it needs to be. But I am specific for a reason.



Start by soaking your beans. It takes times. Properly soaked beans not only digest better, allowing your body to access the nutrition better, but proper soaking and long slow cooking helps to de-gas those beans as they work their way through your tummy. The Weston Price Foundation has a wonderful article on exactly how to soak beans called Putting the Polish on Those Humble Beans In it Catherine Czapp schools us on the proper temperature for your soaking water and why that is. I will attempt to recreate that here.



Start by placing a medium sized pot of water on the stove stop, about 10-12 cups. Take your beans and place them in a collander. Wash them thoroughly and remove any dirt, sticks or rocks. Transfer your beans to a large bowl. When the water begins to form tiny bubbles on the bottom of the pot but BEFORE it begins to boil, take the pot off the heat and pour it over your beans. Although the water is hot, you should be able to touch it without burning your hand. If it feels like a comfortable warm bath your water is not hot enough. If your hand burns upon touching the water, it is too hot. By the way, please use your common sense. Please DO NOT stick your hand in a pot of boiling water. I am absolutely not advocating that.



Once you've added your hot water, stir the beans and allow then to soak. Drain the soaking water and repeat the process 3-4 times over the course of 24 hours. After a day of soaking they will feel springy like fresh, uncooked beans.



Drain the final batch of soaking water and place them in a Dutch oven or large pot. Cover them with cold water and put them on to boil. To the pot place add half a sliced onion, one to two minced garlic cloves, paprika and cumin, a good tablespoon of salt and freshly cracked black pepper. If I was a better blogger I would have written down all the measurements. But I don't really measure as I cook. Oh well, I will make that as a goal for NEXT year. Let the beans come to a boil and then turn down the heat to a simmer. As they cook you can add more water if you need. You want to avoid a roiling boil or else the beans will cook too fast and the beans will be GASSY! Give yourself several hours to cook them. A crock pot is also a wonderful thing to use to cook the beans slowly. But whenever I use use a crock pot to cook beans I always end up finishing them on the stove top....but more on that later.







When the beans are cooked through and very soft, taste them for seasonings. Add more salt as needed. Remember you can always add more, but you can't take any away. Turn the heat on higher to evaporate any water. The higher boil will also begin to break up the beans. Stir the pot and they will break up more. That is what you can't get from a crock pot. The crock pot gets the beans soft, but it doesn't break them up. That's why I always finish them on the stovetop. When they are the right consistency, kinda pastey kinda spreadable but not destroyed, heat up a good heavy pan. And throw in your lard.







Melt your lard. When it gets hot enough to fry, spoon in your beans slowly. Stir them around to incorporate the fat. Add more water or adjust the seasonings.







And there you have it, refried beans. Meaty. Salty. Amazing with tacos. Not slightest bit vegetarian. Use the leftovers to make chili, or throw them over eggs with hot sauce for fantastic huevos rancheros. Or just eat them over rice with sensual slices of avocados. But please please please whatever you do, don't substitute the fat. It is lard, or it just isn't as good.



This post is shared with Traditional Tuesdays and Real Food 101 and Real Food Wednesdays and Healthy 2Day Wednesdays and Simple Lives Thursday and Fight Back Fridays and Momtrend's Friday Food Link

My Adventures in Lard: Rendering

Shortly after my first installment in My Adventures in Lard, I added some leaf lard to my monthly meat order from the Lewis-Waite Farm. But all you can buy from them is unrendered lard. So at the last second I removed it from my cart. Much to my surprise, it appeared in my monthly order, proving to me that I am indeed not as computer literate as I think I am.

I was so intimidated by the vacuum packed roll that I tossed it in the freezer and ignored it around for 2 or 3 months before finally I decided that I needed to man up and just render the damn stuff. What it took was the inspiration of yesterday’s gorditas recipe and a talk with the guy at Flying Pigs Farm at the Union Square Farmer’s Market.

I begged him, what the hell do I do with this stuff? He said just chop the fat into pieces, or better yet run it through a food processor, and place it in a heavy pot with a lid. Add a small amount of water and place into a 200 or 250 degree oven for a few hours. Check on it every once and a while to make sure it isn’t burning or darkening. And once all the pieces have melted, strain it and you are done. Sounded easy enough.

I got home excited to try it out, only to remember that my oven broke this week. DH thinks that the igniter is broken, which has happened before in our last apartment. But secretly he thinks Thing 2 is responsible because his new passion is pushing all the oven buttons because they make such a satisfying loud beep. The time on our oven is always different at different times of the day because Thing 2 toddles over and changes it every few hours. Don’t worry, the process of actually turning the oven on requires several buttons to be pushed in a specific order, and so far he has not done that. And it is difficult enough that I am not worried about that happening. But all of this forced me to render my lard on the stove top.

I didn’t have a lot of fat, so I chopped it into chunks and ran it through the food processor.

I removed a couple of long stringy things which did not look like good eats, and they didn’t have much fat attached to them. So I figured it wasn’t a waste. And all in all, the fat processed well. I placed the paste into a sturdy three quart saucepan and placed it on my quietest burner. I kept the flame on super low and covered the pan. I checked on it every 10-15 minutes. I did not add any water to the pan.

After an hour or so I was done. The last remaining chunks I demolished by gently crushing them with the back of my stirring spoon. The chunks melted quickly. I strained the lard into a pint sized jar. My cut of pork fat measured 1.15 pounds and I rendered almost exactly 16 ounces of lard. So there was very little waste. Oh and it is worth it to note, those little bits are NOT crackling, which is fried pork skin. I hope I didn't commit a major culinary sin by throwing away the little bits. But they were pretty stringy and gross so I didn't figure they were worthwhile to save.

It has been months since I purchased it, so I don’t remember what I paid for it. But I remember thinking that I didn’t save very much by rendering it myself. That was the reason I had tried to remove it from my online shopping cart. It seemed like too much of a hassle just to save 50 cents. I am not a snob, but this is a couple hours worth of work. It just didn’t seem like a significant savings. Now that I have actually done it I am telling you, it wasn’t hard at all. And especially if you can’t find a non-hydrogenated lard, it is well worth rendering your own. When I first started looking for lard I was surprised to see in my grocery store that this already solid at room temperature fat was being hydrogenated! I assume that the demand for pig fat is so nil that hydrogenation is used for lengthening shelf life. Who knew? But my lard doesn’t taste any different than the rendered lard I bought from Flying Pigs, because both farms pasture their animals.

At any rate I feel accomplished, as though I have climbed one more food mountain that I am sure my mother and grandmother never did in their years. And now I have a full pound of fat to make this ridiculous potato chip recipe from The Nourished Kitchen. I can just taste them now! Mmmmmmmm.

This post is part of Food Renegade's Fight Back Friday

My Adventures in Lard: Onion Pie

No Doubt I will lose some readers over the whole lard thing. I mean, this is a borderline taboo subject for us in the US. But I am game. After doing my own research on my minimally processed lard I have realized that it is not the demon fat that everyone makes it out to be. However, I have heard it does taste kind of porky. I chose not to render my own just to save $3. I went to the Flying Pigs in Union Square Green Market. Their stall is definitely there on Fridays. I have been unable to find it any other day of the week, but that might be me, not them. Flying Pigs charges $6 for an 8 ounce container of beautifully rendered leaf lard. Leaf lard is the cleanest, smoothest and least 'porky' of lards. This no bacon grease!

I wanted to use my lard to make a pie crust. But I was hesitant to make a sweet pie, because Lord, what if that lard tasted like pork chops? I didn't want to sink my teeth into a cherry pork flavored pastry. So I settled on a savory application. And when I saw Onion Pie on Agrigril's blog, I knew that was my pork fat method of delivery.

I made the pie crust one evening when the kids got homemade mac and cheese because well, I hadn't made this pie crust at 5am that morning to have it ready to go, so the kids get a 10 minutes dinner. I made my ole' standby pie recipe, 1 1/3 cups of half white flour, 4 ounces of lard (I have been using butter for the past several years), a pinch of salt and 5-6 tablespoons of ice cold water. As you probably know already, mix the lard in with the flour until it resembles a coarse crumb. Then make a well in the center. Add the 5-6 tablespoons of ice cold water and mix the dough all together. The form a ball and then roll out into a circle shaped pie crust with a rolling pin. So many people told me that crusts made of lard were more flaky and tender. But they weren't kidding. This was my first time working with lard, so here is what I experienced. I had had the fat frozen and thawed in the refrigerator. Although the fat had been stored in the fridge for the last couple of days it came up to room temperature very quickly and my hands melted the fat quite easily. It did smell a little like there was a pork roast roasting down the hall. Nothing overwhelming, actually it was good. the crumb was very soft, whereas every time I use butter I still find little hard cold bits when I mix the flour and the butter. Because the dough was so soft I had to use less water, 5 tablespoons only whereas I have used as many as 7 with a butter crust. (Using so much water always made my mother start. Pie crusts were a big family trade in my house growing up, and my mother believe in less water for sure. But she used shortening, who knew back then?)

The lard melted very readily on my hands, but not like shortening does, if you have memories of that growing up. It seems like it took half the bottle of soap to wash shortening off my hands. Not this. The lard melted in a thin, kind of slippery layer on my hands. Washing it off was ridiculously easy. I feel like this has to be related to its goodness as a healthy unprocessed fat (OMG, did she just say that?).

The dough was so soft that I put it back in the fridge to cool down. I rolled it out after Thing 2 went to bed. Thing 1 stayed up to help. I rolled it out and put it (very gently) into my pie plate. I mixed up 5 eggs with some whole milk and heavy cream. I added salt and pepper to taste and about a cup of grated Gruyere cheese. Too bad that I didn't read the whole recipe about cooking the onions and the pie shell first. I tend to get excited about things and blow through the fine print. I just chopped the onions and placed them raw into the unbaked pie shell the same way I would do when I make a spinach and leek quiche. Anyway. I put the onions into the pie shell and poured the mix of egg and cream and cheese over the top. Then I baked that sucker for 45 minutes at 350 degrees. For all my mistakes (honest mistakes I promise), the pie came out amazingly.

And Don't forget to check out Food Renegade's Fight Back Fridays! I love to see what real food her readers are cooking.

Lard, You Might Not Know As Much As You Think You Know

She. Did. Not. Just. Say. That.

Oh I assure you I did.

I have never really eaten Lard in it's most convenient form: tub. I have, of course, eaten bacon, but the rents hated the pork flavor so much that they just tossed the leftover bacon grease. I bought a pre-made pie crust in the days before I had a Table of Promise sitting in my house. Those folks used half shortening and half lard. I was Horrified to discover that gem. The container had two pie crusts and after I discovered what I was eating, I threw the other one away. This is how much we have been pre-programmed to stay away from animal fats like lard and tallow. Those saturated fat laiden items will surely kill us, right?

I have said this before at The Table of Promise, nutritionists aren't specific to their audience when they speak. They address the public as a total, but I have found that two specific groups are listening, the older crowd who are afraid that what they eat will shorten their life span and the younger crowd who are afraid that what they eat will make them fat and unattractive. The problem is that now all our health and food information is about how fat equals a shorter life span and this lumps both the groups together and just adds one more layer to all the misinformation. Lard however, is a different story. Everyone, including me until recently, is pretty well positive that lard is unhealthy, will make you fat faster than other fats and eventually will kill you by clogging your arteries. Does that pretty much sum it up?

I stumbled across lard recently on the Internet. I cannot now remember why. But the article I found was very interesting and peaked my curiosity. It suggested that maybe lard isn't as bad for us as we had all originally thought.

All fats are fat. Yeah, that is right. But some are saturated and some are unsaturated. Some contain traces of water (like butter) that make them actually less calorie dense than their liquid cousins, but that water is just taking up space. Some fats are just fat, and some have trace minerals and vitamins in them. So it is not that cut and dried. I will explain.

I like the website http://www.nutritiondata.self.com/ They have alot of good info, and it is largely unbiased. They just have alot of tables and charts and allow you to draw your own conclusions. I looked up several things on their website in preparation for this post.

First off, Corn and Canola Oil. Both Corn and Canola oil were lumped together because I have to assume they have similar nutritional properties. (Side note:A Tablespoon is a VOLUME measurement, and some of the fats here are DENSER than other, so sometimes one tablespoon is 12 grams and other times a tablespoon is 14 grams. That does make a difference in the final nutrional data in comparison) So first off corn and canola oil have 124 calories in each tablespoon. One tablespoon of corn oil has 14 grams of total fat, 8% of which is saturated, 59% is monounsaturated and 29% is polyunsaturated (yeah-that only adds up to 96%, the website doesn't explain and I can only work with the numbers I am given). The total Omega-3 fatty acids are 813 mg and the Omega-6 fatty acids are 3217 mg (there are no established RDA's for the essential fatty acids....yet). A tablespoon of Corn Oil or Canola Oil also contain 10% of your daily Vitamin E intake and 7% of your daily Vitamin K intake and no phytosterols (more on that later).

A tablespoon of Olive Oil weighs 13g and has 119 calories. One tbsp has 13.5 grams of total fat, 14% of which is saturated, 73% is monounsaturated and 11% is polyunsaturated. The total Omega-3's are 103mg, and the total Omega-6's are 1318mg. One tbsp of Olive oil also contains 10% of your daily vitamin K intake, 10% f your vitamin E intake and 29.8 mg of phytosterols. Phytosterols are compounds found in plant fats that can reduce your cholestorol. Although Wikipedia states that corn oil contains sterols, nutritiondata.sef.com said they did not. I wonder who is true.

Now butter is an animal fat, but it contains some water, so that affects it weight, fat content and calories for the volume measurement of one tablespoon. A tablespoon of butter weighs 14g and has 100 calories. It has 11.4 g of total fat, and of that 63% is saturated fat, 25% is monounsaturated fat and 4% is polyunsaturated fat. Total Omega-3's are 44.1mg and the total Omega-6's are 382mg. One tablespoon of butter also contains 7% of your daily Vitamin A intake, 2% of your daily Vitamin E intake, and 1% of your Vitamin K intake.

Shortening, the hydrogenated vegetable oil that was created to replace lard has been found to be really really bad for us. Even the government recommends that the daily intake for transfat be ZERO. Even though everyone for decades told us margarine was better for us than butter, they were all wrong. We are still wrong about something and we just don't know it yet, I am sure of it. But let's look at the stats, shall we? One tbsp of shortening weighs in at 12 g and has 113 calories. One tbsp also has 13 grams of fat, of which 25% is saturated fat, 42% is monounsaturated fat, 28% is polyunsaturated fat and 13% is trans fat. Total Omega-3's are 240mg and total Omega-6's are 3343mg. One tbsp of shortening will give you 6.8% of your daily Vitamin K intake.

And lastly we have arrived at lard. Take a look at what I found. One tablespoon of lard weighs in at 12g and has 115 calories. One tbsp of lard has 13 grams of total fat, 39% of which is saturated fat, 45% is monounsaturated fat and 11% is polyunsaturated fat. It's total Omega-3's are 128mg and total Omega-6's are 1300mg. One tbsp of lard will also give you 6.3mg of choline, the same compound in egg yolks.

Now I didn't list out all these stats to help you find the ONE item which is the best for you. That would suggest that I think that eating the same thing day after day is good for you! No, a body needs variety, and a body needs different kinds and sources of fats. But I prefer the ones found unprocessed in nature, like butter, basic pressed olive or peanut oil and lard. So what did I take away from all these stats? First-all of these fats have some saturated fat in them. Although modern nutritionism has made saturated fats out to be so bad, even oh-so-holy olive oil does contain some saturated fat. Secondly-lard is made from primarily UNsaturated fats (the good kind). And lastly-lard is lower in saturated fat than butter.

I also like the idea that lard is a natural fat. We began domesticating pigs in around 7000BC. There is no doubt in my mind that we have evolved to eat them and their fat. Humans have been eating it for thousands of years. We have been eating corn oil and shortening for less than one hundred years and they require really aggressive processing. We also know that at least one of those two foods we have managed to really screw up by creating trans fatty acids. So when it comes to fat, I like to keep to a couple rules. First off, I don't fry at home. Deep frying is too difficult and creates alot of (expensive) waste. I am eating less and less of this delicious food group even at restaurants, but here's to my health! Also, I will eat natural fats, but I like to make sure that my food doesn't taste greasy. At least then I know that the amount of fat is within balance and I am probably not eating too much. And lastly, the French would say "je n'est pas faim". Roughly translated it means "I do not have hunger". I try to stop eating when I no longer have hunger, rather than waiting until I am full (it is a really different perspective, no?). These are the ways that I can have my butter and my lard without too much guilt and no pooch hangin' over the skinny jeans.

And now that I have that cleared up, I think I am going to go make a pie crust.