Mexican Stewed Beans with Salsa Fresca

In Mexico City, we learned to prepare traditional stewed beans, as well as a version enriched with pork. Sofrito—a sauté of aromatics cooked separately from the dish’s central ingredient(s)—is a key flavoring for the beans. Our sofrito consists of onion, garlic, tomatoes and jalapeños cooked down to concentrate their essences and is added only after the beans are fully cooked. Instead of the pinto beans so common in Mexican cooking, we opted to use cranberry beans (also called Roman or borlotti beans). We found that the pinto beans available in the U.S. do not cook up with the same plumpness and velvety texture as the ones we tasted in Mexico; cranberry beans were a closer approximation. Though tan in color with speckles of red, dried cranberry beans, when cooked, resemble pinkish beige pinto beans. If you wish to make this dish with pork, see the recipe below; it yields a meaty broth for cooking the beans and shredded pork for stirring in at the end. A fresh tomato salsa served on the side brightens and lightens the earthiness of the beans. The most efficient way to approach this multi-component recipe is to prep and cook the sofrito during the 1 hour that the beans simmer and make the salsa while the cooked beans rest for 30 minutes. Note that the pork and broth need to be made before you begin cooking the beans, but can be made up to three days in advance.