A few months ago, I was prepping for a breakfast taco video shoot. Chorizo, eggs, salsa, the usual. But what I really wanted were beans. To be clear, my dad's very porky, refried pinto beans.
When I was little, every Sunday afternoon we’d go to grandma's house. She’d open the front door and we were greeted with a kiss and the smell of pinto beans and Mexican rice. I would run into the kitchen where what seemed like hundreds of perfectly round flour tortillas stood ready for our family dinner. She had a tall, shiny, sliver pot with black plastic handles that were slightly melted from years and years of use. Every time we visited, it was full of freshly cooked pinto beans swimming in a rich pork broth flavored with onion, peppers, and garlic. When my grandma wasn’t looking, my dad would uncover the beans and fish out the biggest pieces of pork, grab a fresh tortilla, and run out of the kitchen to devour his stolen treasure. Lucky for me he didn't mind sharing with his five year-old son.
When my dad retired, he took over bean duty from my mom. He uses that same giant silver pot that sat on my grandmother's stove when he was growing up. And now I’m the one that gets chased away from the beans when I start pulling the pork out of the pot.
So when I need my bean fix, I go home or call my dad for the recipe. Unlike my grandma’s beans, his are always refried. Refried in bacon fat. He keeps a crock next to the stove and when he fries bacon in the morning, he saves the drippings and uses that to fry the beans. As if that weren’t enough deliciousness, there’s salt-cured belly cooked with the beans! I mean, how could you not love these beans?
I called my dad the day of the video shoot, scribbled down the recipe (which is now tacked above my desk in case of a bean emergency at work) and made his beans here in the BA Test Kitchen. Word got out around the office and a hungry mob formed around the pot. Creative director Alex Grossman demanded that I hand over the recipe as he spread beans on a toasted tortilla.
A few months later, food director Carla Lalli Music texted me on July 4th morning wanting the recipe to make for her family picnic. We knew it was time to publish the recipe online.
So dad, here it is. The beans I put on my favorite bean-chorizo-salsa breakfast taco. The beans I have to have every time I go home. The beans that are now “quart-ed” up and frozen at work in case I need a little taste of home up here in NYC.
Thanks for the recipe, and happy birthday dad!
