Easy Refried Beans

It’s always good to have a few standards – quick and easy dinners that you can make from stuff that keep in either the freezer or the pantry. Pasta is the easiest example of this – I don’t know anyone who doesn’t keep a few boxes of pasta and a can or of tomato sauce in their house at all times.

One of our favorite standards are burritos. I’ll be honest – I’m not exactly going for authenticity here. I doubt the things that I make and call burritos have any relationship to actual burritos – but like the stuff I talked about in the last post, this is an evolved recipe. I started with an idea, and maybe even a recipe – but after a ton of tinkering, what I cook is nothing like what I started with.

I found the last ingredient this week in cumin. I’ve done middle eastern and a lot of Indian stuff… but cumin is used just as commonly in Mexican food. Again, another perfect example of why I started this project. Before I learned about cumin, I used some ground black pepper and red pepper flake. I never had any problem doing things that way – but now that I’ve used cumin instead, I’m unlikely to go back. The cumin was exactly what I needed to give this a little bit of oomph.

This isn’t the kind of thing I’d serve company, but Victoria and I probably wind up eating this once every week or two, because we’re too tired to do any serious cooking.

Quick Refried Beans

1 Onion, small, finely chopped
1/4 – 1/3 pound raw shrimp (51-60 count), peeled and cut into thirds
2 cloves garlic, minced
1.5 teaspoons ground cumin
1 15 ounce can each black beans and vegetarian refried beans
1 half-avocado, cut into small cubes
1 half-handful of yellow cheese – cheddar, Monterey jack, whatever.
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1 pinch kosher salt

This recipe is piscetarian – suitable for people who don’t eat red meat or poultry, but do eat fish. If you want to make it vegetarian, or kosher, just remove the shrimp. Luckily for me, my wife thinks that shrimp are vegetables.

Put a small amount of your favorite type of oil in a pot on high heat. Toss in the shrimp, onion, garlic, and cumin, and let that cook for two or three minutes. When the onions look like they’re getting done, throw in the black beans, including about a third of the liquid from the can. When the beans start simmering, which should be fairly soon, throw in the refried beans. They’ll start out as a gloopy mass, but as they get heat they’ll soften up and start to mix with the other stuff. Just keep stirring them until the mass blends. When it does, turn the heat down, toss in the avocado, cheese, and the pinch of salt, and keep stirring.

The cheese will add some flavor gooeyness to the beans, but should more or less disappear entirely once it gets stirred in. Once the ingredients are fully mixed, you’re pretty much done – you can simmer it for a bit longer, just turn the heat way down so you don’t burn anything. If you go too long, you’ll get a lot of drying on the bottom and a crust on top. Not bad, just not ideal. The whole process, from the time the oil is hot to the time you’re ready to serve, should take about ten minutes. Prep shouldn’t take you more than about ten minutes, either.

Serve on tortilla shells or as taco filling, along with whatever you would normally do in those situations – spinach or lettuce, salsa, extra cheese, chopped tomato, cucumber, cilantro… two quick tips, though.

First, from Yousef – many people would put sour cream on something like this. Try Greek yogurt instead – it is healthier and (in my opinion, after Yousef served it instead of sour cream with fajitas a few weeks ago) at least as tasty, if not more so.

Second, from my mom – it is so odd to me that many people don’t seem to know this trick. I’ve heard a lot of people say that they don’t like making tacos, because the taco shell is always so brittle – the crunch is good but the whole thing just falls apart. What you need to do is this – stuff the taco shells with the filling, be it meat or beans, before they go into the oven. The shells will soften where the filling touches it – so you get a wonderful crispy crunchy outer shell edge, but a soft middle part that doesn’t break into pieces. Also, you can put the cheese on top of the filling, and then it melts in the oven. So delicious.