Reminded me of ham and beans (same flavor). I just wanted to remind anyone before adding the beans to the slow cooker that they should either be soaked overnight or as the instuction manual to the crock pot says " beans should be softened completely before combining with sugar or acid food. It may have a hardening effect on them and will prevent softening. Or you can boil beans for 10 min. reduce heat, cover, and allow to simmer 1 1/2 hrs. or until beans are tender." I did this and they turned out being a good consistency when they came out of the crock .

Wonderful flavor and texture, Brandi! The reviewer who had hard beans after ten hours, probably forgot to soak overnight. Mine were done in 8.5 hours in the crockpot on low, after soaking all night long.Whirred them around in my food processor and Voila! Better than store bought and more flavorful than restaurant.Thanks Brandi!

This is the best bean recipe I have ever tried! I think the trick is to soak the beans overnight first. I used four pieces of already cooked bacon, which added a great smokey flavor to the beans. I left the crock pot on LOW for 10 hours, while I was at work, and when I got home, they were perfect! I mashed them up, added a little salt, some shredded cheese, and watched everyone gobble them up!!!

this recipe is simply wonderful! some of the reviewers mentioned they preferred more spice so i took the hint, added extra garlic & doubled the onion. i also only drained off 1/2 the liquid, did a partial mash & topped the beans with a small amount of grated cheddar cheese. you'll discover this recipe comes out very similar to refried beans. the next time i'm planning to find out how good these beans will be if served whole. thank you brandi!

Brandi says tis recipe will take about 6 hours. Well they are going into hour #9 and are still hard as a rock.

This was the first time I have ever tried to make refried beans. I made them for my annual cinco de mayo party. I soaked the beans for 8hrs and then put them in the crock pot for 6hrs. The beans were very easy to make however I wasn't crazy about the taste. They could have used a litle more spice. Maybe next time I will add some more onion and some chiles. Overall not bad, just a little bland for my tastes.

Thanks for the great recipe, Brandi! For those who said the beans never softened...if the dried beans are old, they WILL NOT soften. I had 2 bags of beans that had been forgotten in the pantry for a long time. I tried cooking them in a crock pot after soaking overnight, but they never softened. After 18 hours in the crock pot, I gave up and threw them out. I usually use salt pork instead of bacon when cooking my beans. I freeze bacon drippings in 1 tablespoon batches all the time and if I don't have salt pork or bacon, I use the frozen bacon drippings for seasoning. I also add Cumin when cooking my beans. I have read that you should wait until the last minute to add salt, because if you add salt early in the cooking process, the skins of the beans can be tough. :-)

Mine came out great! These were exactly what I wanted- refried beans. I had a whole bag of light red kidney beans so I had to scale and fudge this a bit. I’m not much for fooling with dried beans but someone gave them to me and I needed to use them up. I used 2 crock-pots. I soaked the beans overnight. I went by the recipe except I also added about a tsp. of Adobo Seasoning to each crock for a little Mexican flavor. I highly recommend this if you have some around. I also used about half the bacon that the recipe called for because it was less fat and I hate to use expensive bacon just for seasoning. I didn’t drain any water. When my crocks of beans were getting mushy and the water was soupy and thick I transferred all the beans to a big microwave casserole. At this stage I didn’t need to discard my bacon. It had virtually dissolved in the beans. I mashed the rest of the solid beans up, and nuked them on medium 20 mins. stirred and nuked again on medium another 15 mins. This dried the soupiness out and made them that pasty consistency of refried beans that I was wanting without burning them in the crocks.

I found these to be pretty bland. If I made them again, I'd add lots more seasonings to them.

Thanks for sharing this recipe!