Making homemade deliciousness, from scratch, is seriously the best.
You then have control over flavor, sodium, texture, pure ingredients, spicy or not to be spicy, fat, allergy issues, and more. All of these reasons are why I love to make Homemade Refried Beans. Additionally, it is WAY cheaper than buying canned refried beans on a weekly basis! All you need is a Crock Pot, bag of dried pinto beans, an onion and garlic powder! This recipe stretches a bag of dried pinto beans to six or seven meals that include Refried Beans.

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Published January 26, 2021
Updated March 2, 2022
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Cost to make this Recipe

Below is a cost breakdown comparing buying canned refried beans or making them from scratch:
A. Canned refried beans cost $0.89 at our local ALDI,
A 32 oz bag of dried pinto beans at ALDI is $1.55.
An onion is $0.45, garlic $0.11.
Total cost to make six servings of refried beans $2.11.
That is $0.35 a serving. Legit, am I right?!

However, if you were to buy the same ingredients at a different store the prices would be different…
B. Canned refried beans at Walmart are $1.37.
A 32 oz bag of dried pinto beans $1.98.
An onion $0.70 and garlic $0.11.
Make your own from Walmart it will cost $2.79, or $0.45 a serving.
Still pretty awesome. I still love me some ALDIs. And for six weeks of Taco Tuesdays, $0.35 for refried beans is my kind of price.

C. A third option is another local grocery store…
Canned refried beans at Kroger cost $1.69.
A 32 oz bag of dried pinto beans cost $1.79.
An onion cost $0.65 and garlic $0.16.
Make your own from Kroger will be $2.60 to make your own at $0.43 a serving.

Homemade from scratch is the best for our family of 6 and is such a cost saver. As a result, by saving a few dollars a month making food from scratch can help to then funnel more money towards other things! For example, school shoes for the kids, dog food or chocolate to hide in my purse. Each week our food budget is $170.00 cash.

This Weeks Dinner Menu

Making Homemade Refried Beans in a Crock-Pot helps to keep the cost of our weekly food budget low. As a result, we can make refried beans and have them available on-hand for two months and our family plans to have Tacos on a weekly basis. This Wednesday, our plan was to have Tacos. On the other hand, I already had a container of Homemade Refried Beans in the freezer that I was able to thaw overnight in the fridge and did not need to make them this week. But I did want to share this amazing recipe in the hopes that you too can save money on your food budget.

Below are the meals our family plans to have this week.
Monday: Tuna Noodle Casserole with sweet Peas
Tuesday: Cauliflower Pie
Wednesday: Tacos
Thursday: Grilled Cheese and Tomato Soup
Friday: Manicotti with steamed Carrots
Saturday: Chicken Wings, Baked Beans and homemade Cornbread Muffins
Sunday: Waffles, Bacon and Sausage, Fried Eggs

What are you having for dinners this week? I would love to hear from you! Certainly, feel free to shoot me a message or comment on this post.

Homemade Refried Beans Recipe

Ingredients Needed

32-ounce bag Dried Pinto Beans
1 Onion
Water to fill Crock Pot
1 Tbsp Garlic Powder OR 3 Garlic cloves

Honestly this recipe is only three ingredients! How awesome is that?! For so little ingredients included, the final taste of these Homemade Refried Beans is so complex and delicious.

As of now, our four kids do not yet enjoy the complexities of spicy foods. Therefore, this recipe is not catered to a spicy demographic. However, if you desire to have your Refried Beans spicier, feel free to add crushed red peppers or jalapenos to the Crock-Pot while the pinto beans are cooking. Doing so would increase the spiciness of your recipe more than the typical Traditional Refried Beans. In the future, we hope to have our kids explore spicier recipes, but having a 3-year-old still has restrictions on our menu. We do, however, add salsa and medium-spicy queso to our plates while eating.

Homemade Refried Beans Directions

1. Open the bag of pinto beans and then pour them in a sink colander to rinse the beans well.
This is by far my favorite strainer EVER! It has rubber edges that pull out and rest on the edges of the sink, so it does not need to sit on the base of your sink resulting in no more water splashing up and getting onto your food!

2. Then pour the rinsed pinto beans into the Croc-Pot. I like to use Crock-Pot liners for way less cleanup!

3. Fill the Croc-Pot with water making sure to leave the water line 1-2 inches below the brim.

4. On a cutting board, slice an onion in half and then remove the skin.
Do not cut it up or cut the ends, the onion should stay together while the beans cook. Place both halves into the water cut side down. I found a package of “Tearless Sweet” onions! These are amazing, I had no tears and could actually smell it right near my face with no issues.

Update on the onions: They did not cause me to bawl my eyes out as I cut them, so I count that as a win! However, the flavor was not the same as you would get with yellow onions, white or sweet Vidalia onions so that was a slight bummer.

As a result, I will be sticking with the typical yellow onion for this recipe.

5. On a cutting board, roughly chop the garlic cloves and then put them into the Crock-Pot or add 1 Tablespoon garlic powder. I was out of garlic powder and the minced garlic worked great! As the entire contents will be blended at the end, there is no need to finely mince the garlic.

6. Cover the Croc-Pot and then set the temperature setting at High for 6-8 hours or Low for 8-10 hours.

7. When done cooking, use a slotted spoon and scoop out all of the beans from the water into a large bowl.

8. Add one or both onion halves, without their crispy ends, to the bowl. Doing so will add the amazing flavor of the onions to the Homemade Refried Beans.

9. Use a ladle or coffee cup and then scoop 3 cups of liquid from the Crock-Pot into the bowl to be blended with the pinto beans.

10. Then, using an immersion blender, blend the pinto beans and onion to your desired texture.
Additionally, you may need to add more of the water from the Crock-Pot to the beans as you blend them. I super love my KitchenAid 2-Speed immersion blender!
Tyler and our kids gave it to me for a birthday gift a few years back and as a result, using a hand blender sure does beat scooping everything into a blender and making a mess!

11. Using a ladle, scoop refried beans into a bowl to serve immediately with Taco Tuesday or scoop them into freezer safe containers for storage.
Let them cool completely before placing in the fridge or freezer and leave a good 1/2-1 inch of room at the top as the beans will expand when freezing.
These beans go really quick in our house and when a whole package is made, we get a total of six weeks’ worth of refried beans.

Homemade Refried Beans Recipe

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