Frijoles de Olla

One of the simplest dishes in the world, Frijoles de Olla is also one of our favorites. How simple is it? It’s just dried Mexican beans (pintos, bayos, frijoles negros, or mayocobas, flor de mayo, canarios, etc.) simmered in water with nothing more than a little onion and garlic. Salt gets stirred in at the end.

It makes a great side dish for many Mexican and Tex-Mex specialties, but if you’re a bean-lover, it’s wonderful even by itself. And it’s vegan. We like to garnish a bowl of it, served with some of its soupy cooking liquid, with chopped cilantro and white onion. It’s also easy to turn it into a soup — sauté some onion till tender and translucent, add frijoles de olla with its liquid and some diced tomato (either canned or fresh), simmer fifteen minutes or so, and it’s soup. Toss some chopped cilantro in at the end, if you like.

Finally, if you want to make Frijoles Refritos (Refried Beans), Frijoles de Olla is the first step.

Just one thing to keep in mind: The cooking time is wildly different for various types of beans. Bayos, mayocobas and similar beans cook quickly: They’re usually done in about an hour. Pintos usually take two and a half or three hours. Black beans take about four. However, the freshness of the beans are a factor as well; fresher beans cook more quickly. Therefore, it’s important to taste along the way to judge done-ness.

Serves four.

Ingredients

1 pound dried beans

1/4 white onion, sliced

4-5 garlic cloves, peeled and lightly smashed

1 tablespoon salt

Instructions

1. Place the beans in a large pot with the onion and garlic, and pour 10 cups of boiling water on them. Bring to a boil over high heat, reduce heat to low, cover and cook until the beans are tender but not mushy, 1 to 4 hours, depending on the variety and how fresh they are. Stir only occasionally, to make sure the beans aren’t sticking. Add a little water if necessary.

2. Stir in the salt, and serve, or let them cool in their liquid, then store them covered in the refrigerator for later use.

Recipe notes

The technique — pouring boiling water over the beans — comes from Diana Kennedy, who provided her own recipe for frijoles de olla in The Cuisines of Mexico. Her recipe includes lard, which we’re skipping here, as the vegan version is absolutely delicious. We must note, though, that we recently stumbled across a J. Kenji López-Alt story in Serious Eats that seems to blow conventional never-salt-beans-till-the-end wisdom out of the bean water. I tried it with some cannellini beans and he’s right: they were perfect, with better texture than if they’d been salted at the end. Therefore we may be tweaking this recipe once we have a chance to right it López-Alt style.