Mexican food is my ultimate comfort food, especially when camping, and these dehydrated refried black beans totally make my day. Forget that homogenous store-bought gloop that you can buy in a tin. With a dehydrator, you can make sensational dehydrated refried black beans to bring on your backpacking trips. Tent tacos, here we come…
This is a great recipe on its own, whether or not you’re camping. Enjoy them as tacos with your favourite fixings. Serve them along side fajitas (check out these portobello mushroom fajitas for inspiration). Or load them up into a bowl with rice, grated cheese, salsa and avocado for some top notch bowl food.
These dehydrated refried black beans take a bit of time, but much of it is unattended cooking time. You can shortcut the first step by using tinned black beans, but you get a lot more flavour when you cook the beans from scratch. It’s also worth leaving the beans to simmer for a good long while so they get really soft. This makes the beans extra tasty, and also makes them easier to rehydrate at camp.
This recipe calls for epazote, an aromatic Mexican herb. It’s optional, but worth getting hold of if you can. You can purchase it online (along with other specialty Mexican ingredients) from The Cool Chile Company.
I use an Excalibur Dehydrator for dehydrator recipes like this one. Refried beans dehydrate brilliantly and are super quick to rehydrate on the trail. Last time I made this all I had to do was pour boiling water over the beans, cover and wait a few minutes – no simmering required!
This recipe is adapted from the Frijoles Negros Refritos recipe at Demuths Cookery School, one of my go-to resources for veggie recipes and a fantastic cookery school in Bath. Recommended!
Don’t feel like making these yourself? Purchase our homemade refried baked beans in our online shop, conveniently packaged for your next tent taco adventure.
Dehydrated refried black beans
Portobello Mushroom Campstove Fajitas
Hi Monica,
Thanks for sharing your adventures and recepies.
I wanted to share this site where you can check out dehydrated refried beans and salsas.
You will just need to add hot water, no need to deshidrate them yourself. Authentic Mexican flavor and super convenient.
Take a look at http://www.defrutusa.com
Hi Monica, is the link for your online shop (to purchase your homemade refried baked beans) still active as I receive an error when I click the link?
Hi Jon! Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Apologies but I had to close the shop last year when I moved. I still produce dehydrated food privately. If you want to know more, feel free to drop me an email! monica@eatsleepwild.com
Hi Monica
What is the yield of the dehydrated black beans when you rehydrate them on the trail?
Depends on how much water you end up adding! But the yield will be similar to the cooked version so use that as the basis for measuring your dehydrated portions if that makes sense (if not, let me know). Basically, I eyeball the cooked result to decide how many portions it makes to suit me. Then I dehydrate. Then I divide the dehydrated stuff into however many portions I figured out. On the trail I add boiled water and mix and heat, adding more water if needed to get it to my preferred consistency.