What Are Pinto beans, dried and How Can I Use Them?

Wondering what to do with pinto beans, dried? This guide covers how to pick them, cook them, store them, and swap them, plus 28 recipes to put them to work.

Key Points

Dried pinto beans are cheap, cook-from-scratch pintos; see pinto beans for the full guide.
Soak them, then simmer gently 1½ to 2 hours until soft and creamy.
Hold salt and tomato until the beans are nearly tender, or the skins stay firm and chalky.

What is pinto beans, dried?

Dried pinto beans are the speckled tan-and-brown beans you buy by the bag to cook from scratch. They are the same bean as canned pinto, just before the soak and simmer, so for the full background on flavor and what pintos pair with, see pinto beans.

The draw of dried over canned is twofold: they cost a fraction of the price, and you control the seasoning and texture from the start. A pot of beans you cooked yourself tastes deeper than anything from a tin.

Once cooked, the speckles fade and the beans turn an even pinkish-brown, soft and earthy.

Cooking Dried Pinto Beans

Pintos want a soak and a slow simmer. Cover them with a few inches of water, soak overnight or do a quick boil-and-rest, then simmer gently for about 1½ to 2 hours until creamy. See beans for the full soaking and cooking method.

They cook up soft and a little starchy, which is exactly what you want for a Mexican kitchen. That creaminess is what makes Crock-Pot Chalupa and homemade refried beans work, and it lets the beans melt into the chili of a 5 Alarm Chili.

Hold the salt and any acid, like tomato, until the beans are nearly tender. Added too early, both keep the skins firm and the beans chalky long past their time.

A ham hock or strip of bacon in the pot turns plain pintos into a meal, the way a Horseshoe Mountain Ranch Pinto Beans recipe does.

Substitutes and Storage

Dried pinto beans swap one for one with most other dried beans in a pot. Cranberry beans are the closest match in look and taste. Pink beans, red kidney beans, or black beans all stand in, each shifting the color and flavor a little.

Canned pinto beans are the fast substitute when you skip the soak. One drained 15-ounce (425 g) can equals roughly ⅔ cup of dried beans once cooked.

Store dried pinto beans in an airtight jar somewhere cool and dark. They keep for a year or more, but older beans take longer to soften and may never get fully tender, so buy fresh stock and use it within the year.