Homemade "Re-fried" Beans

Our family loves re-fried beans - especially our toddler! When my husband and I made the transition to a plant-based, whole food diet, I began to closely monitor ingredient labels and I was shocked when I realized that traditional re-fried beans from the can at the grocery store had animal lard in them. Who knew? I began asking around at the different Mexican restaurants that we frequent to find out which ones served refried beans that had lard added to them. You'd be amazed at how many restaurants put animal lard in their re-fried beans. So, I decided it was time to start making my own re-fried beans - free of animal lard and anything else that I don't particularly want to find in my food. This recipe has very few ingredients (always a win!) and is fairly simple to make. Just throw everything into the crock pot, let it cook all day, and then run it through the blender or food processor (you can also mash them with a potato masher).

You Will Need:
2 lb bag of dry pinto beans, cover beans with water and soak overnight
2-3 small to medium onions, chopped
6-8 cloves garlic, chopped
2 tbs salt
1 tbs black pepper
1 tbs ground cumin

After soaking pinto beans overnight in water, drain and rinse them well. Place beans and all other ingredients into crock pot. Cover beans with water (you may need to add water as they cook in order for them to remain covered in water). Cook on high for 8 hours. Cooking times may vary, you want the beans to have that nice light brown color and be tender all the way through.
Strain the liquid from the beans and set liquid aside. Place half of the beans into a blender or food processor along with 1-2 cups of the liquid and blend until texture is smooth. Place beans into a large bowl and set aside.
Place the other half of the beans into blender or food processor along with 1-2 cups of the liquid and pulse a few times. Beans should still be slightly chunky. Add this half of the beans to the other half and stir until well combined. Stir in more liquid if necessary to obtain desired consistency.
Serve beans hot as a side dish for your favorite Mexican meal or as the filling for bean burritos. Enjoy!

*note: Beans freeze well in quart sized bags.