Easy Restaurant Style Refried Beans Recipe you can make in the slow cooker. Tons of spices with little effort. You’ll end up with a huge batch – perfect for a large family or left overs. Use it to make our Refried Bean Dip with Air Fryer Tortilla Chips. Have an Instant Pot? Check out our Instant Pot Refried Beans.
With Cinco de Mayo arriving in a few days, we’ve been on a Mexican Food kick. First we posted this incredible Mexican Shrimp Cocktail, followed by our Authentic Carne Asada Recipe (for Carne Asada Tacos and Carne Asada Nachos) and now these Slow Cooker Refried Beans Recipe. If you’re a huge Mexican Food fan, make sure to check out all of our Mexican Recipes.
This Refried Beans recipe is super easy and hands off, just like our Frijoles Charra, Instant Pot Kidney Beans and Instant Pot Pinto Beans. You’ll be wondering why you haven’t been making homemade refried beans for years. Instead of paying $1 for a small can you’ll be left with a full slow cooker full of easy refried beans.
REFRIED BEANS RECIPE
To make this a Vegan or Vegetarian recipe, just replace the Instant Pot Bone Broth with vegetable stock.
We love topping our beans with pickled vegetables: pickled peppers, pickled banana peppers, pickled red onions, etc. Even pico de gallo would be a great topping.
We use this immersion blender to get them “restaurant style”. It will be difficult to duplicate the super creamy texture by hand.
Warm beans are much easier to mash than cold beans. We highly recommend mashing them before storing them in the refrigerator. If you don’t, you’ll need to warm them back up before smashing when you’re ready to eat them. Who wants an extra step in the kitchen? Not us!
This is a very forgiving recipe. We tend to add double the listed amount of creole seasoning listed, but that won’t work for most folks. Play around with the final product until you get your spice preference nailed.
To add more flavor, throw in a few slices of bacon to the slow cooker before cooking. We tried to keep our refried beans recipe healthy here at FoodieandWine.com, so we can have an extra cocktail or two to the meal, like a Michelada or Mango Michelada.

Ingredients
- 10 cup Chicken or Vegetable Broth
- 4 cup Dried Pinto Beans
- 1 Small White Onion (Diced)
- 1 tsp Lime Juice
- 1 tsp Cumin
- 1 tsp Cajun Seasoning (Chili, Adobo, Cayenne)
- Salt (To Taste)
Instructions
- Turn the slow cooker on high heat.
- Rinse the pinto beans and remove any floating beans or small rocks.
- Add the beans, water, onion, lime juice, cumin and cajun seasoning to the slow cooker.
- Cook on high for 5-6 hours (or low for 7-8 hours), stirring occasionally.
- After the beans have fully cooked, immediately mash them with a potato masher or immersion blender.
- Add salt (start with 1/2 tsp) and increase to taste.
- Optional - Top with cheese, sour cream or salsa and enjoy!
Instant Pot Refried Beans – Recipes from All Over
Wednesday 19th of January 2022
[…] in the Instant Pot is MUCH easier and quicker than traditional methods, although we do love our slow cooker refried beans recipe . This Instant Pot Refried Beans recipe doesn’t require soaked beans so you can make […]
Refried Bean Dip + 3 Bean Options! – Recipes from All Over
Wednesday 19th of January 2022
[…] and tons of taco flavor! This healthy Mexican bean dip can be made with Instant Pot Refried Beans, Slow Cooker Refried Beans or canned refried beans! Make a batch of air fryer tortilla chips, grab a cold Michelada and dig […]