Frijoles Puercos

Fried down hard until it is stiff enough to hold a shape on a spoon and a tortilla will stand up in it.

Pork. Not vegetarian — contains a sausage whose meat the source does not name, cheese whose rennet the source does not name, chorizo, which is pork, lard, pork.

Ingredients

• 450 g dried pinto beans, cooked with their liquid
• 120 g lard
• 250 g chorizo, as on its own page, skinned and crumbled
• 200 g cheese that melts — Chihuahua or mild Cheddar — grated
• 100 g pickled jalapeños, chopped, plus 2 tablespoons of their liquid
• 80 g green olives, pitted and chopped
• 4 sardines or 2 anchovy fillets, mashed (optional)
• salt, at the end
• tortilla chips, as on their own page, to serve

Method

1. IT IS FRIED DOWN HARD UNTIL A TORTILLA WILL STAND UP IN IT, and that is the whole difference from the three bean dishes before it. Those keep their broth; this one drives every drop of it off. Cooked beans go into a lot of hot lard, are mashed in the pan, and then fried for twenty-five or thirty minutes, stirred and scraped, well past the point where they look done. The finished pan pulls away from the sides in one mass, holds a scoop on a spoon without slumping, and will support a tortilla chip pushed upright into it. Stopped at the point a refried bean would stop, it is a good bowl of refried beans and not this.
2. THERE IS A GREAT DEAL OF LARD AND CUTTING IT CHANGES THE DISH. A hundred and twenty grams. The name says plainly what kind of dish it is, and the fat is what lets it be fried that hard without going dry and crumbly -- the beans stay glossy and rich as the water leaves. With three spoonfuls it becomes a stiff dry paste at the same point.
3. THE CHEESE GOES IN AT THE END AND OFF THE HEAT, AND IT IS A MELTING ONE. Stirred through the hot mass so it melts and ropes into it. On the heat it would catch on the base within a minute at the thickness the pan has reached by then.
4. THE SOUR AND SALTY THINGS ARE DOING REAL WORK. Pickled jalapeños with their liquid, green olives, and mashed sardine if you will have it. A pan of beans, lard, chorizo and cheese is overwhelmingly rich and one-noted, and these three are the only things cutting it. The sardine is the one people argue about -- it brings a salty, slightly fishy depth that is very good and that some will not want at all -- so it is marked optional here rather than left buried in the list.
5. IT IS SERVED WARM, NOT HOT, AND IT SETS AS IT COOLS. Out of the pan it is just spreadable; ten minutes later it is firm. That is correct -- it is eaten as a thick dip with chips, or spread on things, and a runny version has not been fried long enough.
6. The cooked beans drained, the LIQUID KEPT.
7. The chorizo cooked in a dry pan 8 MINUTES until the fat has run and it has caught. Lifted out.
8. The lard melted in the same wide pan over a medium heat -- all 120 g.
9. The beans added a ladle at a time and MASHED against the base of the pan as they go in.
10. Fried 25 to 30 MINUTES, stirred and the base scraped, with a splash of the bean liquid whenever it threatens to catch.
11. Cooked WELL PAST the point where it looks done.
12. TESTED: the mass must PULL AWAY FROM THE SIDES in one piece and a tortilla chip pushed upright into it must STAND.
13. The chorizo returned, with the jalapeños and their liquid, the olives and the mashed sardine if using. Stirred through.
14. THE PAN TAKEN OFF THE HEAT.
15. The grated cheese stirred in until melted and roped through the mass.
16. TASTED and salted -- the chorizo, olives and cheese carry a lot already.
17. Served WARM with tortilla chips. It firms as it cools, which is right.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Mexico · All recipes