Make your own Refried Beans

My new found love is dry beans.

Inexpensive. Good protein. Good fiber.

...bad reputation.

I love to save time and money, and I understand that canned refried beans are super cheap. But when a huge bag of beans is even cheaper and the flavor is so much better, it's worth a try, right?

Here's how:
2 C. Pinto beans. Sort through the beans to remove any dirt (or, as I found one time, popcorn kernels...true story!) Rinse thoroughly. Soak overnight in 6 C. water. They'll come out with the water looking a little cloudy. Rinse thoroughly. This soaking process is part of getting rid of that bad reputation...

Add beans to a large pot and add ~6 C. fresh water. Simmer with lid tilted for 2 hours (preferably more) stirring frequently to get the beans to start breaking down.
Add 1 C. salsa. I really liked Dei Fratelli, but any salsa will do.
Continue cooking another hour or two to allow flavors to blend and water to cook down. Keep stirring!

You can see that my salsa is in and my beans are breaking down. At this point, it was a little too watery. I should have turned up the heat and let a little more of the water cook off, but oops! I just did it later.

Time for the stick blender.

Getting creamier!

Here it is all blended.

Time to check for thickness. This is where I decided to cook it down some more.

Ah, that's more like it!

This recipe works really well as a double batch, then freeze half for later.