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Best Refried beans in Toronto

“Frijoles refritos: not fried again, but 'well fried' or 'intensely fried.'”

Refried beans

What the real thing tastes like

Refried beans (from Spanish: frijoles refritos, lit. 'well-fried beans') is a dish of cooked and mashed beans that is a traditional staple of Mexican and Tex-Mex cuisines, although each cuisine has a different approach when making the dish. Refried beans are also popular in many other Latin American countries. In this dish, after being boiled and then mashed into a paste, the beans are fried or baked (though they are fried only once). The English "refried beans" is a mistranslation, since the essence of "frijoles refritos" is the reheating and mashing of the beans; the term "refried" is misleading. As described by Rick Bayless, "they're refritos—not fried again, as you might assume, but 'well fried' or 'intensely fried'."

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Refried beans start with a humble foundation—cooked beans, mashed smooth—then get their real character from frying or baking into a rich paste. The name misleads in English, but the Spanish tells the truth: frijoles refritos means beans that are well-fried, intensely fried, coaxed into something deeper than their boiled beginning. What emerges is a staple across Mexican and Tex-Mex tables, with each tradition bringing its own hand to the technique.

Order it here when it has

  • mistranslation reveals deeper meaning
  • adaptable across cuisines
  • transforms simple beans into complexity

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