What is Pinto Beans Mexican Style?
Mexican-style pinto beans are an extra savory legume dish, served as a side, filling, or topping. Pinto beans are simmered in a pot with pureed tomatoes, bacon, onions, and spices including cumin and chill powder. The brown beans are cooked until very tender. The flavors are salty, a little spicy, and strongly umami.
What does Pinto Beans Mexican Style Taste Like?
Salty is one of the five main tastes. It has a satisfying and addictive quality with hints of sourness. Salty foods include cheeses, cured meats, chips, and olives. It is used in almost every dish and prepared food. Salt is added to enhance flavor and offer a distinctly salty taste.
Umami is one of five main tastes. It is savory with a depth of flavor. Umami is a taste in many foods, including meat, seafood, beans, and nuts. It is both naturally occurring and created through the specific use of ingredients to create a satisfying taste. Umami is characteristic of proteins and savory dishes.
Spicy is a flavor that brings heat and fire to food by creating a burning sensation in the mouth or sinuses. Spicy flavors come from hot peppers, horseradish, and wasabi. Spicy adds a kick and sometimes complexity to a dish and releases endorphins, creating a mildly addictive quality.
Ingredients
Tomato sauce is an extremely popular Italian sauce used for pizza, pasta and much more. It is made by cooking down tomatoes, seasonings and sometimes oil. The sauce is red and may be smooth or slightly chunky. The texture is slightly thick, yet easy to pour. The flavor of this sauce is tart and sweet with a rich umami flavor from the reduction of tomatoes and a hint of garlic.
Pinto beans are a type of legume used in many cuisines around the world, but are most popular in Latin cooking. The pinto bean has a light brown speckled skin and cream colored interior. Its body is hard, oblong, round and less than a quarter of an inch in length. When cooked, pinto beans expand and become soft and starchy. It has a mild and savory nut flavor similar to a kidney bean. These flavors are enhanced with seasonings, such as salt and spices.
The popular bacon streaked with fat that is used in American cuisine, comes from the belly of the hog. Bacon is cut in long, thin strips, then salt cured and sometimes smoked or flavored with maple. When raw, the meat is pink and when cooked it produces a meaty and smoky aroma, with a taste that is similar and very salty. Generally bacon is cooked to a crispy texture that turns the meat brown and leaves a greasy film that can be blotted away.
The onion is a bulb vegetable, meaning its bulb and not its leaves are eaten. Onions come in many varieties, including white, yellow and red. Shallots are small and mild onions. Vidalias are sweet, while red onions are strong and sharp. The onion is usually round and has a thin dry skin around its juicy layers. This skin depends in the color of the onion, as does the flesh. The flesh, or body of the onion is made of multiple round layers, that get smaller towards the center. The flavor of onions are sharp and sweet when raw, with an astringent taste. When cooked, these flavors mellow and the sweetness emerges. Onion are a very common flavoring and ingredient for many savory dishes.
Cilantro is a leafy herb with a thin green stalk and small, partially fringed green leaves that look similar to a three leaf clover. It has a distinct smell that is similar to a lime and a flavor to match that. In addition, it smells and tastes the same and has a strong flavor with a hint of greens. Due to a genetic trait, some people find that cilantro tastes like soap. This herb is used in many cuisines, particularly from Asia and Central and South America.
There are many varieties of chili peppers. They are a small, hot pepper. The pepper is dried and ground into a fine powder, that varies in shades of red. Chili powder is a spice blend popular in American and Latin-American cooking. It is usually made from ancho chilies, paprika, oregano and cumin, other spices may be added. It is used in many protein dishes and has a spicy and herbal flavor.
Cumin is a spice used in many cuisines around the world. The seed from which cumin is ground is a thin seed with a long body and tapered ends. Cumin is just a few millimeters in length and has a light brown or tan tone, which can look a bit grey. Ground cumin is light brown and has a flavor that is spicy, earthy and a little nutty. When pan heated, the flavor of cumin is both tempered and enhanced.
Salt is a mineral composed mostly of sodium chloride. It is the main flavoring used in food and is naturally occurring in certain foods, such as cheese, beets, meat and celery, plus many others. Salt is white and has finer granules than sugar. Many commercial salts include iodide, while others exclude it. Most salts are white, while some are naturally pale pink with minerals. Salt brings out the flavor of something and can create a tangy mouthfeel, if used in excess.
Garlic powder is made from dehydrated garlic cloves that have been ground into a super fine powder. This powder is a pale yellow/golden color and is used to flavor foods. It works well in a pinch and can be used in many of the same ways that fresh garlic is used. The flavor is milder than raw or cooked garlic and is spicy, pungent and nutty. Garlic granules are another form of dehydrated garlic, but rather than powder it is coarser and has the same function. It is often used on top of fresh pizza, as a light dusting.
