Home-cooked refried beans, 5-minute salsa and the Best Burrito Bake ever

Refried beans in the slow cooker are almost as easy as opening a can and are much healthier. This is a great recipe and we eat this about once a month in various guises.

Ingredients for refried beans to serve 4-6

1 onion, peeled and halved
3 cups/500g pack of dried pinto beans (unsoaked)
4-5 rings of pickled Jalapeno chillies from a jar, chopped
4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tsp salt
2 tsp ground black pepper
2 tsp Schwartz's Fajita seasoning*
7 cups/1.75 l water

* I use this a lot but, if you can't get hold of it, try 1 tsp paprika, 1/2 tsp mustard seed, 1 tsp cayenne, 1/4 tsp each ground coriander, ground nutmeg and 1/2 tsp oregano.

See? They look awful! UG-ly food! But delicious!

Directions:

Lob it all in the pot. Cook on High for 8 hours. Drain the beans but retain the liquid. Mash the beans with a potato masher and, if needed, add a little of the cooking liquid back in. At this stage, your beans will look horrendous but will taste great.
Serve with salsa, sour cream and grated cheddar plus any other favourite Tex-Mex side dishes. Or make....

Burrito Bake

Ingredients:


3/4 of refried beans (above)
1 portion salsa (below)
300 g (1 cup) sour cream or half-fat crème fraiche
200 g (1 cup) grated cheddar
4 wheat tortillas

Directions:

This is my first step-by-step, so be nice people!

Place a stripe of beans down the middle of your tortilla.

Fold the sides in over the beans and then fold in the top and bottom of your tortilla. Flip the tortilla over as you place it in a casserole so that the seam is downwards and nothing can unfold and repeat this with another 3 tortillas.

You should have something looking like this in your casserole dish.

Cover the tortillas with a layer of salsa, then a layer of sour cream (this can be blotched on rather than spread over the entire thing) and finish with your grated cheese. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes until the cheese is golden and bubbling. It will then look like....

...this! And it tastes amazing!

5-minute salsa

1 tin (14 oz/400g) chopped tomatoes

1 onion, finely chopped (ideally red)

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 tsp salt

juice of 1 lime (I get it bottled and use about 3 tbsp)

1 1/2 tbsp chopped leaf coriander (cilantro), again, I get this jarred.

5-6 rings of pickled jalapeno chilli, chopped

Directions:

Mix. In a bowl. It's that complicated! Adjust seasonings until it fits your idea of salsa. It won't taste like the stuff in jars as it is uncooked but it's fabulous with most Tex Mex dishes.