Chef Lupita
Arroz a la Oaxaqueña
Oaxaca's red rice, stained with tomato and fried in lard, steamed with carrots, ejotes, black beans, and epazote. The side that anchors a Oaxacan family meal and earns its place beside the main.
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Frijoles con Chepil
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Oaxacan black beans simmered slow with chepil, the wild legume herb that grows along the milpas of the Sierra Sur, finished with lard and epazote and eaten from clay bowls with warm corn tortillas.
Side Dishes
Mexican
Weeknight
Comfort Food
Budget Friendly
15 min
Active Time
2 hr 30 min cook•2 hr 45 min total
Yield6 servings
This is Oaxaca. Specifically the Valles Centrales and the Sierra Sur, where chepil grows wild along the edges of the milpas and women gather it in the rainy season the way other people gather mushrooms. Chepil, Crotalaria longirostrata, is a small-leafed legume herb with a flavor that is hard to describe to anyone who has not eaten it. Salty without salt. Faintly grassy. A little like raw green beans, a little like fresh peas, a little like nothing else.
Frijoles con chepil is the dish that Oaxaca eats when it wants to eat itself. The beans are frijol negro, slow-simmered in a clay olla with onion, garlic, and lard, no soaking, no shortcuts, until the broth turns nearly black and tastes like the bean itself. Then the chepil goes in at the end and changes everything. The pot smells like the milpa after a rain.
My mother did not cook this. She was from Jalisco and Jalisco does not have chepil. I learned this dish from a senora named dona Florencia in Zaachila, in the market on a Thursday, who let me sit on a plastic stool while she stemmed the leaves and explained why you never put chepil in until the very end. Boil it long and the flavor flattens. She said it like she was warning me about something more important than beans. No me vengas con atajos. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and this one belongs to Oaxaca.
Chepil (Crotalaria longirostrata) is a perennial legume native to southern Mexico and Central America that has been used as a quelite, a wild edible green, since pre-Columbian times by the Zapotec and Mixtec peoples of what is now Oaxaca. The plant fixes nitrogen in the soil and traditionally grew alongside corn and beans in the milpa system, providing both a soil amendment and a seasonal vegetable harvested during the rainy months from June through September. Frijoles con chepil is one of the dishes documented in the Codex Florentino's 16th-century descriptions of indigenous Oaxacan cooking, and the herb remains so identified with the region that fresh chepil rarely appears in markets outside Oaxaca, Chiapas, and Guerrero.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
dried black beans (frijol negro de Oaxaca preferred)
Quantity
1 pound
white onion
Quantity
1 medium
halved
white onion for serving (optional)
Quantity
1/2 cup
finely diced
garlic cloves
Quantity
6
lightly smashed
manteca de cerdo (pork lard)
Quantity
2 tablespoons
fresh epazote
Quantity
2 sprigs
fresh chepil leaves
Quantity
2 cups packed (about 2 large bunches)
stemmed
fresh chile de agua or chile serrano (optional)
Quantity
1
slit lengthwise
kosher salt
Quantity
1 tablespoon, plus more to taste
hand-pressed corn tortillas (optional)
Quantity
for serving
warmed
crumbled queso fresco (optional)
Quantity
for serving
salsa de chile pasilla mixe (optional)
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| dried black beans (frijol negro de Oaxaca preferred) | 1 pound |
| white onionhalved | 1 medium |
| white onion for serving (optional)finely diced | 1/2 cup |
| garlic cloveslightly smashed | 6 |
| manteca de cerdo (pork lard) | 2 tablespoons |
| fresh epazote | 2 sprigs |
| fresh chepil leavesstemmed | 2 cups packed (about 2 large bunches) |
| fresh chile de agua or chile serrano (optional)slit lengthwise | 1 |
| kosher salt | 1 tablespoon, plus more to taste |
| hand-pressed corn tortillas (optional)warmed | for serving |
| crumbled queso fresco (optional) | for serving |
| salsa de chile pasilla mixe (optional) | for serving |
Equipment Needed
- •Heavy clay olla or 6-quart Dutch oven
- •Wooden spoon
- •Deep clay bowls for serving
Instructions
- 1
Pick through and rinse the beans
Spread the dried black beans on a sheet pan and pick out any small stones, broken beans, or shriveled ones. Rinse them under cold water in a colander. Do not soak them overnight. Oaxacan cooks do not soak. The beans cook fine without it and the broth comes out richer when the beans surrender their starch slowly into the pot.
If your beans are old, more than a year in the bag, soak them for two hours. Old beans never quite soften and there is no recovering from that. - 2
Start the pot
Place the rinsed beans in a heavy clay olla or 6-quart Dutch oven. Cover with cold water by three inches. Add the halved onion, the smashed garlic, and one tablespoon of the lard. Bring to a gentle simmer over medium heat, partially covered. Skim the gray foam that rises in the first twenty minutes. La manteca es el sabor, even here, even in beans. The fat is what makes the broth feel like food and not like water with beans in it.
- 3
Simmer low and slow
Reduce the heat to low. The beans should bubble lazily, never roll. Cook for one hour and forty-five minutes to two hours, stirring every so often and adding a cup of hot water if the level drops below the beans. Do not add salt yet. Salt the beans now and the skins will toughen. Asi se hace y punto.
- 4
Stem and rinse the chepil
While the beans cook, pick the chepil leaves off their thin stems. The stems are tough and stringy and you do not want them in the pot. Rinse the leaves in cold water, drain, and set aside. Two cups packed sounds like a lot. It cooks down to almost nothing. Chepil is shy in volume but loud in flavor.
Chepil is hard to find outside of Oaxaca and southern Mexican markets. If you cannot find it fresh, dried chepil from a Oaxacan vendor will work, use about 1/3 cup. Do not substitute spinach or watercress. The flavor is not the same and you will be making a different dish. - 5
Test the beans
Crush a bean between your thumb and finger. It should give without resistance, creamy at the center, no chalky core. If it still has bite, keep simmering and check again in fifteen minutes. Beans are done when they are done. The clock is a suggestion.
- 6
Add the salt, the herbs, and the chepil
Now add the salt, the epazote sprigs, the chepil leaves, and the slit chile if using. Stir gently. The chepil will wilt into the broth within a minute and turn the pot a deeper green-black. Stir in the second tablespoon of lard. Simmer for ten more minutes, uncovered, so the flavors marry and the broth thickens slightly. Taste. Adjust salt. The broth should taste of beans first, of chepil second, of fat underneath.
- 7
Serve in deep bowls
Fish out the spent onion halves, the epazote stems, and the chile. Ladle the beans and their broth into deep clay bowls, generous with the liquid. Top with diced raw white onion and crumbled queso fresco at the table. Pass warm corn tortillas and a small bowl of salsa de chile pasilla mixe. This is not a side dish in Oaxaca. With a stack of tortillas it is dinner. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.
Chef Tips
- •If you can find frijol negro from Oaxaca, the small black beans grown in the Valles Centrales, use them. They have thinner skins and a richer, almost mineral flavor. Domestic black turtle beans will work but the broth will be thinner.
- •Cook the beans in a clay olla if you have one. The unglazed clay holds heat differently from metal and the broth tastes of the pot itself. Season the olla first with water and a clove of garlic if it is new. A heavy Dutch oven is the practical compromise.
- •Save any leftover beans and broth for the next morning. Reheat them with a little more lard and serve over a tlayuda or fold them into a quesadilla with quesillo. The flavor only deepens overnight.
Advance Preparation
- •The beans can be cooked one day ahead without the chepil and refrigerated. Reheat gently and add the chepil only in the last ten minutes before serving so the herb stays bright.
- •Fresh chepil can be stemmed and refrigerated wrapped in a damp cloth for up to two days. After that the leaves yellow and the flavor fades.
- •The cooked dish keeps refrigerated for three days. The chepil flavor mellows after the first day but the beans themselves get better.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 285g)
Calories
320 calories
Total Fat
5 g
Saturated Fat
2 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
3 g
Cholesterol
5 mg
Sodium
670 mg
Total Carbohydrates
52 g
Dietary Fiber
13 g
Sugars
3 g
Protein
17 g
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