Frijoles con Espinazo y Hierba Santa

Ingredients

Equipment Needed

• •Large heavy pot or clay olla, at least 6-quart capacity
• •Cast iron comal or heavy skillet for toasting chiles
• •High-powered blender
• •Small heavy skillet for frying the chile paste
• •Wooden spoon and ladle

Instructions

1. 1

   Start beans and espinazo

   Place the sorted black beans and the pork spine sections in a large heavy pot. Cover with cold water by three inches. You need that extra water because the beans absorb as they cook and you want broth at the end, not paste. Add the half onion, the three whole garlic cloves, the bay leaves, and the epazote sprig. Set over medium heat and bring to a gentle simmer. Do not add salt yet. Salt tightens the bean skins early and they'll never get creamy. Salt comes at the end.

   Do not soak the beans overnight. Mexican grandmothers don't, and for good reason. Unsoaked beans absorb the pork broth as they cook, which is exactly what you want. Pre-soaked beans cook in their own water memory and miss the marrow.
2. 2

   Skim and simmer low

   In the first fifteen minutes, a gray foam will rise to the surface. Skim it off with a ladle. This is protein from the pork and from the beans, and leaving it clouds the broth. Once the foam stops coming, reduce the heat until the pot barely moves. Lazy bubbles, one every few seconds. Cover partially, leaving a crack for the steam to escape, and let it go for two and a half to three hours. Check the water level every forty-five minutes and add hot water if the beans start to show above the surface. The beans are done when you can crush one between your fingers with no resistance and the espinazo meat is pulling away from the vertebrae.

3. 3

   Toast the chiles

   While the beans simmer, heat a dry comal or cast iron skillet over medium. Toast the guajillo and costeño chiles separately, pressing them flat against the hot surface with a spatula, about 20 to 30 seconds per side. The guajillo will puff and turn a shade darker. The costeño is smaller and thinner and burns faster, so watch it. The kitchen should smell warm and slightly smoky. That smell is the oils opening up. If a chile blackens, throw it away. Burned chile is bitter chile and there is no fixing it.

   The chile costeño rojo is an Oaxacan chile, smaller and hotter than the guajillo. It adds a sharp edge underneath the guajillo's sweetness. If you cannot find it, use two extra guajillos and one dried chile de arbol. It is a compromise, but a functional one.
4. 4

   Soak and blend chiles

   Place the toasted chiles in a heatproof bowl and cover with hot tap water. Not boiling. Hot water softens the flesh and lets the flavor come through clean. Boiling water cooks the skin and makes the salsa bitter. Let them soak for twenty minutes until they are soft and pliable. Drain the chiles and transfer to a blender with the quarter onion, the remaining garlic clove, and one cup of the bean cooking liquid. Blend on high until completely smooth. You want a puree with no chunks, no skin fragments. If the blender struggles, add another quarter cup of cooking liquid to get it moving.

5. 5

   Fry the chile paste

   In a small heavy skillet, melt the manteca de cerdo over medium heat. When the lard shimmers, pour in the blended chile puree. It will sputter and pop, so stand back. Cook for five to seven minutes, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until the puree darkens from bright red to a deeper brick color and the fat begins to separate around the edges. La manteca es el sabor. This step concentrates the chile flavor and removes the raw taste. You'll smell the difference: raw chile smells sharp and vegetal, fried chile smells round and deep. That transformation is the whole point.

   Do not use vegetable oil. The manteca carries flavor into the chile paste that oil cannot. If someone tells you it doesn't matter, they haven't tasted the difference side by side. It matters.
6. 6

   Add chile paste to the pot

   Scrape the fried chile paste directly into the bean pot. Stir it through the broth until the whole pot turns a dark garnet. The beans will absorb the chile color over the next twenty minutes. Remove and discard the spent onion half, the bay leaves, and the epazote sprig if it hasn't already dissolved. Now add salt. Start with one tablespoon of kosher salt, stir, taste, and adjust. The broth should taste assertive because the tortillas you eat alongside will absorb flavor and dilute the perception of salt. Simmer uncovered for twenty minutes to let everything marry.

7. 7

   Finish with hierba santa

   Drop the torn hierba santa leaves into the pot. Push them down into the broth so they are submerged. Cover and cook for ten more minutes. No longer. The heat pulls the anise oils out of the leaves and perfumes the entire pot. If you cook them too long, the fragrance cooks off and you are left with limp leaves that taste like nothing. Ten minutes is enough. When you lift the lid, the smell should hit you immediately: black beans, pork marrow, chile, and that unmistakable green anise. That is the Sierra Norte in a pot.

   Hierba santa is not epazote. They are completely different plants with completely different flavors. Hierba santa (Piper auritum) has a deep anise and sassafras note. Epazote is sharp, medicinal, and camphorous. Do not substitute one for the other. If you cannot find hierba santa, make frijoles con espinazo without it and call the dish what it is. Honesty is better than a wrong substitution.
8. 8

   Serve in deep bowls

   Ladle the beans and broth into deep bowls, making sure each serving gets a section or two of espinazo with the bone, a generous share of beans, and some hierba santa leaves. Set warm corn tortillas on the table, wrapped in a cloth. Put the lime wedges and sliced raw onion alongside. The diner tears the meat from the bone at the table, squeezes lime over the bowl, and eats with tortillas torn and dipped into the broth. There is no elegant way to eat espinazo. That is the beauty of it. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.

Chef Tips

• •Ask your butcher to cut the espinazo into 2-inch sections with a band saw. Do not try to do this at home with a kitchen knife. The vertebrae are dense bone. A good carnicero or a Mexican butcher shop will know exactly what you need when you say 'espinazo para frijoles.' If they look confused, find a different butcher.
• •Hierba santa grows wild across southern Mexico and is easy to cultivate in warm climates. If you live in the southern United States, it grows as an ornamental in many gardens and the owners often don't know it is edible. In Mexican grocery stores it is sometimes labeled as hoja santa or acuyo. The leaves should be large, bright green, and smell strongly of anise when you tear them. If they don't smell like anything, they are too old.
• •The chile costeño rojo is specific to Oaxaca, particularly the coastal and Sierra regions. You can find it dried at Oaxacan specialty vendors online or at well-stocked Mexican groceries. If you truly cannot source it, add two extra guajillos and one dried chile de arbol for a similar heat balance. But know what you are missing: the costeño has a fruity sharpness that the guajillo alone does not.
• •This stew is better the next day. The beans continue to absorb the chile and the pork marrow as they sit. Make it Saturday morning, eat it Saturday night, eat it again Sunday for breakfast with a fried egg on top and more tortillas. Cada estado, su propia cocina, and in the Sierra Norte, leftover bean stew for breakfast is a way of life.

Advance Preparation

• •The entire stew can be made up to three days ahead and refrigerated. The flavor deepens overnight as the beans absorb the chile and the marrow continues to dissolve into the broth. Reheat gently over low heat, adding a splash of water if the broth has thickened too much.
• •If making ahead, hold the hierba santa. Add the torn leaves when you reheat and cook for ten minutes before serving. This preserves the anise fragrance, which fades in storage. Fresh hierba santa on a reheated pot gives you the best of both worlds: deep bean flavor from the rest and bright perfume from the herb.
• •The stew freezes adequately for up to two months, though the bean texture softens further. Freeze without the hierba santa and add fresh leaves when reheating.

Frequently Asked Questions

Nutrition Information

1 serving (about 400g)