Frijol Colado Yucateco

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Heavy 6-quart pot for simmering the beans
• •High-powered blender
• •Fine-mesh strainer (chinois or sieve)
• •Rubber spatula or ladle for pressing the puree
• •Cast iron comal for charring the habanero
• •Wide heavy skillet or clay cazuela for frying the strained beans

Instructions

1. 1

   Pick through and rinse the beans

   Spread the dried black beans on a sheet pan and pick out any pebbles, broken beans, or pieces of dirt. The Yucatecan small black bean is the right one for this dish. It cooks down to a darker, glossier paste than larger black beans. Rinse the picked beans under cold water in a colander until the water runs clear.

   Do not soak Yucatecan black beans overnight. The Peninsula cooks them straight from dry. Soaking dulls the flavor and the bean paste comes out flatter.
2. 2

   Build the pot

   Place the rinsed beans in a heavy 6-quart pot. Add the 10 cups of water, the half onion left whole, the garlic cloves, and the epazote. Do not add salt yet. Salt at the start tightens the skins and the beans stay tough no matter how long you simmer. Bring to a boil over high heat, then lower to a gentle simmer.

3. 3

   Simmer until soft

   Cook uncovered or partially covered at a lazy simmer for two hours, maybe a little more. The beans are ready when one crushes completely against the side of the pot with the back of a spoon. No bite, no resistance. If the water drops below the level of the beans, add more hot water, never cold. Cold water shocks the beans and slows them down. Add the salt only in the last fifteen minutes.

4. 4

   Blend the beans

   Fish out the epazote sprigs and discard them. Leave the cooked onion and garlic in the pot. They go into the blender. Working in batches, transfer the beans and their cooking liquid to a blender. Blend on high until completely smooth, about a minute per batch. The puree should look like dark chocolate sauce, glossy and even.

   Vent the blender lid with a folded towel. Hot bean puree builds pressure fast and will paint your ceiling if you seal it shut.
5. 5

   Strain the puree

   Set a fine-mesh strainer over a clean bowl. Pour the blended beans through and press with the back of a ladle or a rubber spatula. Push everything through except the skins. The skins are what stand between you and the silk texture that defines frijol colado. Discard them. This is the step that separates frijol colado from any other black bean puree. Asi se hace y punto. The name itself, colado, means strained. Skip it and you have made something else.

   Take your time on the sieve. A senora in Merida will work the spatula across the mesh for ten minutes to get every drop of paste out. Patience here is the whole dish.
6. 6

   Char the habanero

   Place the whole habanero on a hot dry comal over medium-high heat. Roll it with tongs until the skin blisters and blackens in patches on every side, about three to four minutes. The kitchen will smell sharp and a little floral. That perfume is what the habanero brings to the bean. Do not pierce or cut the chile. You want the flavor to bleed into the lard slowly, not a wall of heat all at once.

7. 7

   Fry the beans

   In a wide heavy skillet or a cazuela, melt the manteca de cerdo over medium heat. La manteca es el sabor. Add the finely chopped onion and cook until translucent, about three minutes. Lay the charred whole habanero in the lard. Let it perfume the fat for thirty seconds. Pour in the strained bean puree. It will sputter. Lower the heat and cook, stirring with a wooden spoon, until the puree thickens, darkens, and pulls away from the sides of the pan in a sheet when you drag the spoon across, eight to ten minutes.

8. 8

   Adjust and rest

   Taste for salt. The puree should taste deeply of bean, lightly of lard, and carry a quiet floral heat from the habanero pulled through the fat. If you want more habanero presence, leave the whole chile in the pot a few minutes longer. If you want it cleaner, fish it out now. Pull the pan off the heat and let the frijol colado rest five minutes. It will thicken further as it sits.

9. 9

   Serve

   Spoon into a clay cazuelita and bring it to the table warm. Serve with hand-pressed corn tortillas, pickled red onion, and crumbled queso. This is the spread that fills panuchos, that anchors a Yucatecan breakfast plate next to huevos motulenos, and that goes on the table at any hour because the Peninsula treats frijol colado the way Mexico City treats salsa: it belongs everywhere. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.

Chef Tips

• •The small Yucatecan black bean (frijol negro de la Peninsula) is the right bean. If you can only find larger Mexican black beans, they will work, but the paste will be a shade less dark and a shade less sweet. A substitution is a compromise, not an upgrade.
• •Fresh epazote is non-negotiable. Dried epazote tastes like hay. If you cannot find it fresh, find a friend with a garden, because epazote grows like a weed and one plant feeds a neighborhood. Skip the dried version entirely.
• •The habanero stays whole. Do not cut it, do not seed it, do not blend it. The Peninsula's cooks know exactly how to control habanero heat: char it, let the fat take what it takes, and pull it out when the perfume is where you want it. No me vengas con atajos.
• •Manteca is the fat. Not olive oil, not vegetable oil, not butter. Manteca de cerdo. Render your own from pork fat or buy good Mexican-style manteca from a carniceria. The flavor of frijol colado comes from the marriage of bean, epazote, and lard. Change the fat and you change the dish.

Advance Preparation

• •Frijol colado can be made up to four days ahead and refrigerated in a covered container. The flavor deepens overnight. Reheat gently in a skillet with an extra spoonful of manteca, stirring until the paste loosens and warms through.
• •The strained bean puree, before frying, can be frozen for up to three months. Thaw in the refrigerator overnight and then proceed with the lard, onion, and habanero step.
• •If you are building panuchos, make the frijol colado one day ahead. A cold, firm paste is much easier to stuff into a puffed tortilla than a warm, loose one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 85g)