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–+ servings

Instant Pot Refried Pinto Beans

Use your Instant Pot and save money (and sodium) when you make your very own Instant Pot Refried Pinto Beans! The best part? These have NO ADDED FAT! Tastes better from scratch and freezes wonderfully too!
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Course: Side Dish
Cuisine: American, Mexican, Tex-Mex
Keyword: DIY, Electric Pressure Cooker, From Scratch, Homemade, Instant Pot, Make Your Own, Pinto Beans, Refried, Tex-Mex
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour
Cooling, Pressure Building, and Pressure Release: 50 minutes
Total Time: 2 hours
Servings: 12
Author: Little Home in the Making

Ingredients

  • 3 cups Dry Pinto Beans
  • 1 medium Onion peeled and quartered
  • 4 cloves Garlic peeled and roughly chopped
  • 1 tbsp. Salt
  • 1 tsp. Ground Black Pepper
  • ⅛ tsp. Ground Cumin
  • 8 cups Cold Water

Instructions

  • Add all of the ingredients to the inner pot of a 6 or 8 qt Instant Pot or electric pressure cooker.
  • Put on the lid of the Instant Pot and set the valve to “Sealing”.
  • Select “Manual” and cook on high pressure for 60 minutes. The pot will take anywhere from 10-20 minutes to reach pressure.
  • Once the instant pot has completed it’s cooking, it will beep and switch to “warm”.
  • Let your pot do a 10 minute natural pressure release, then switch the valve to “venting” and vent the steam from your Instant Pot.
  • Once the pin has dropped, carefully remove the lid of your Instant Pot.
  • Turn your instant pot off and let the beans cool for 10-20 minutes.
  • Drain the beans in a colander set over a bowl to catch the liquid. Add the beans back into your Instant Pot or into a large mixing bowl. Add about 1 cup of reserved liquid and use an immersion blender to puree the beans. Add additional reserved liquid while blending to achieve the desired texture. Note that hot refried beans will appear more “liquidy” than when completely cool. So if you like a thick refried bean texture, you may want to go for a runnier consistency while the beans are still hot.
  • Serve the beans as desired.

Notes

Per 1 serving (approximately ½ cup prepared): Calories: 66 | Fat: 0g | Carbs: 23g | Fiber: 14g | Net Carbs: 9g | Protein: 7g |
If you’re planning on freezing some beans (I always do because this recipe makes A LOT!), cool the beans completely in a bowl in your fridge. Once the beans are cooled, you can scoop them into freezer containers and freeze them. These are the freezer containers I use. They are a 2 cup measurement which is roughly equivalent to 1 can of refried beans and are reusable so they can be used for freezing broth, soup, beans, etc. Over and over again.
 
Notes on Soaking: If you like, you can soak your beans overnight prior to making this recipe. Just drain the soaking liquid and use 7 cups of cold water instead of 8 cups. You will have lots of liquid leftover after cooking, but because of the recipe method you can choose how much of that you want to add back into the beans.