A pot of charro beans made from 1.1 lb (500 g) of dried pintos is not baked beans and not chili: it is whole pinto beans in a thin, savory broth flavored with bacon, Mexican chorizo, sliced franks, tomato and serrano chile, eaten with a spoon from a small bowl set beside a plate of grilled meat. In Mexico they are called frijoles charros (FREE-hoh-lehs CHAH-rrohs) or frijoles a la charra, after the charros, the country’s traditional horsemen, and they are most closely tied to the north, where no carne asada comes without them. The batch below starts with 500 g (1.1 lb) of dried beans and feeds 8 as a main or 12 as a side.
What are charro beans, and are they worth making?
How do you make charro beans? Soak dried pinto beans overnight, then simmer them in 12½ cups (3 liters) of fresh water with onion, garlic and salt for 90-120 minutes. Meanwhile render bacon, brown chorizo and franks in a skillet, and cook onion, serrano and tomato in the drippings. Combine with the beans and their broth, simmer 20 minutes and finish with cilantro. 615 minutes including the soak for 8 servings.
Yes, especially if you are feeding a group. A pound of dried beans turns into roughly 3 kg (6½ lb) of beans and broth, the pot holds happily on low heat for the whole meal, and the expensive part, 450 g (1 lb) of meat, is spread across 12 bowls. Each main-course bowl carries 21 g of protein and 11 g of fiber.
Who will love them. Anyone planning a cookout, a taco night or a slow weekend lunch where people serve themselves. They also work as a full weeknight dinner with rice and tortillas.
Who might not. People who avoid pork (all three meats are pork unless you buy turkey franks), anyone watching sodium (920 mg a bowl), and anyone who needs dinner in an hour without cooked beans on hand. The fix for that last one is an Instant Pot or four cans.
Real time. 615 minutes on the clock, but 480 of those are the overnight soak. The cooking day is 135 minutes, about 55 of them hands-on.
Honest difficulty, easy. What goes wrong is order (tomato added too early), salt (the meats season the pot for you) and liquid, which quietly cooks away over 2 hours if nobody looks.
Charro beans vs borracho, cowboy and baked beans
If you grew up on canned baked beans or barbecue cowboy beans, the biggest surprise is that charro beans are not sweet and not thick. The broth should cover the beans in the bowl.
Borracho beans (drunken beans) are charro beans with 1-2 cups (250-500 ml) of beer added for the final simmer, plus 10 extra minutes. They are not kid food: the USDA’s nutrient retention table shows that a dish simmered for 30 minutes still holds 35% of the alcohol, and 25% after an hour.
Refried beans share only the first half of the work. For Mexican refried beans the cooked beans are mashed and fried in lard until thick; for charro beans they stay whole and brothy. Cook a double pot on Sunday and you can make both.
Ingredients, with US and UK swaps
Exact amounts are in the recipe card: 500 g (1.1 lb) pinto beans, 150 g (5 oz) each of bacon, chorizo and franks, 300 g (10 oz) tomatoes, 225 g (8 oz) onion in total, 2 serranos and a small bunch of cilantro.
| Ingredient | What it does | US | UK | If you can’t find it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dried pinto beans | creamy inside, starch thickens the broth | every supermarket | world-food aisle or online | borlotti beans, similar creaminess |
| Bacon | smoky fat for the whole tomato base | regular sliced bacon | smoked streaky bacon, not back bacon | pancetta, less smoky |
| Mexican chorizo | red color, chile and vinegar spice | fresh, in the meat case | Mexican grocers online | 100 g (3.5 oz) diced Spanish cooking chorizo |
| Franks | the mild bite kids go for | hot dogs | jarred or chilled frankfurters | diced ham |
| Serrano chiles | clean, medium heat | Latin grocers, many supermarkets | green finger chillies | 1 jalapeño, milder |
| Cilantro | fresh finish | cilantro | fresh coriander | leave it out; parsley tastes wrong here |
Spanish chorizo is a different sausage. Mexican chorizo is raw and crumbles as it cooks; Spanish chorizo is cured with smoked paprika. It works, but use 100 g (3.5 oz), dice it small and expect a smokier, less tangy broth.
Bean age matters more than variety. A bag of beans older than a year may never soften. Buy from a store with turnover and skip bags with wrinkled or faded beans.
Equipment. A 5-6 quart (5-6 liter) pot and a 12-inch (30 cm) skillet. No big skillet? Brown the meats in the bean pot first, lift them out, cook the beans, and return the meats at the end.
Stovetop, Instant Pot or canned beans
Stovetop gives the best broth; the pressure cooker rescues you when you forgot to soak; cans get it on the table on a Tuesday.
- Stovetop, soaked → 90-120 minutes at a gentle simmer, according to University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension. The overnight soak uses 10 cups of cold water per pound of beans, in the fridge.
- Quick soak → boil 2-3 minutes in 6 cups of water per pound, cover and rest 1 hour off the heat. A few more skins split, nothing else changes.
- Unsoaked on the stovetop → it can be done, but the beans take much longer and cook unevenly. I don’t.
- Instant Pot, unsoaked → 15-20 minutes at high pressure with about 6 cups of water per pound, then a 20-minute natural release, per UNL Extension. If they are not tender, 10 more minutes at pressure. Cook the meats in a skillet meanwhile and finish everything together on Sauté for 15 minutes.
- Canned → a 15-ounce (425 g) can gives 1¾ cups of drained beans (UNL), so this batch needs 4 cans of pinto beans. Make the meats and tomato base as usual, add the beans with the liquid from one can only plus 3 cups (750 ml) of water or chicken stock, and simmer 20 minutes. Taste before salting.
Planning the day, and how to tell it’s right
135 minutes on the day, about 55 hands-on, with the beans soaked the night before.
Make ahead. Cooked beans in their liquid keep 3-4 days in the fridge (USDA FSIS), so you can cook the beans one day and finish the charro beans in 35 minutes another. The finished pot is better the next day, when the broth has thickened and the meat has given up more flavor. For a party I make the whole thing the day before.
| Stage | What you should see |
|---|---|
| Cooked beans, 90-120 min | one crushes between two fingers, skin as soft as the center |
| Bacon, 6-8 min | clear fat in the pan, edges starting to brown; smoking means the heat is too high |
| Chorizo, 4-5 min | no pink left, the fat has turned red |
| Tomato base, 5 min | tomatoes collapse when pressed with a spoon |
| Finished broth, 20 min | cloudy, reddish, with some body; it covers the beans in the bowl |
Mistakes that ruin charro beans
- Beans that never soften, 2 hours in. Old beans, or tomato added before the beans were tender. Add the tomato base only once the beans pass the squeeze test.
- Too salty. Salting the pot like plain beans and then adding 1 lb (450 g) of cured, salty meat. Use 1 tsp in the pot and the rest, if needed, at the end.
- Rubbery bacon. Raw bacon dropped into the bean pot. Rendered in a skillet first, it crisps and gives the fat for the tomato base.
- A greasy slick on top. More than 3 tablespoons of loose fat in the skillet. Spoon it off before the onion goes in.
- Dry beans. A lid left half-on for 2 hours. Check every 30 minutes and top up with hot water, never cold.
Spice level, kids and allergens
Heat, 2 out of 5 with two chopped serranos and their seeds. For kids, drop the chiles in whole and unopened: they add aroma without much heat, and you fish them out before serving. Put hot sauce or pickled jalapeños on the table.
Allergens. Beans, onion and tomato are gluten-, dairy- and egg-free, but franks, chorizo and ham can contain gluten, soy or milk proteins as fillers, so read the labels if you are cooking for someone with celiac disease or allergies. The dish contains pork.
How to scale charro beans for a crowd
For a cookout I count a cup (8 fl oz, about 250 g with broth) per person as a side and 1½ cups as a main, so the base batch covers a dozen sides or eight mains.
| Sides | Mains | Dried beans | Bacon | Chorizo | Franks | Tomatoes | Cooking water |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 | 4 | 250 g (9 oz) | 75 g (2.5 oz) | 75 g (2.5 oz) | 75 g (2.5 oz) | 150 g (5 oz) | 1.5 l (6¼ cups) |
| 12 | 8 | 500 g (1.1 lb) | 150 g (5 oz) | 150 g (5 oz) | 150 g (5 oz) | 300 g (10 oz) | 3 l (12½ cups) |
| 20 | 13 | 850 g (1.9 lb) | 250 g (9 oz) | 250 g (9 oz) | 250 g (9 oz) | 500 g (1.1 lb) | 5 l (5¼ qt) |
| 30 | 20 | 1.25 kg (2.75 lb) | 375 g (13 oz) | 375 g (13 oz) | 375 g (13 oz) | 750 g (1.65 lb) | 7.5 l (8 qt) |
- The pot sets the limit. Twenty sides need a 10-12 quart stockpot; thirty need two pots.
- Brown the meat in batches. A 12-inch (30 cm) skillet handles about 1 lb (450 g) of meat at a time. Crowded, it steams instead of browning.
- Salt late. With a big batch, salt the bean pot with half and adjust after the meats go in.
- Keep it hot, safely. On a buffet, hold the pot at 140°F (60°C) or above in a slow cooker or over the lowest flame.
Variations worth making
- Borracho beans → add 1-2 cups (250-500 ml) of Mexican lager for the final simmer and give it 10 more minutes. Adults only.
- Lighter → half the bacon and chorizo and no franks: about 303 calories and 7 g of fat a bowl, with 17 g of protein.
- Vegetarian → no meat, the tomato base cooked in 2 tablespoons of oil with 1 chipotle in adobo for the smoke: about 268 calories and 4 g of fat. Tasty, though it is a different dish.
- With ham instead of franks → about 398 calories and 14 g of fat a bowl.
- Monterrey style → some recipes from that city use bayo beans, add pork skin (cueritos) or extra franks, and serve pickled jalapeños alongside.
- Jalisco and Mexico City → in Jalisco they can be brothy or drier with ranchero sauce; in the capital they tend to be brothy and are eaten like a soup at taquerias.
What it costs in the US
Using the BLS US city average prices for August 2026, the parts of this recipe the BLS tracks come to $7.07, about 88 cents a bowl: pinto beans 1.1 lb at $1.630/lb ($1.80), bacon 0.33 lb at $6.605/lb ($2.18), boneless ham 0.33 lb at $5.382/lb ($1.78, if you swap it for franks) and tomatoes 0.66 lb at $1.977/lb ($1.31). Chorizo, onion, chiles and cilantro have no BLS series, so the real total is a little higher.
What drives the cost is the bacon. Five ounces of it cost more than the whole pound of beans. To trim the bill, cut back on bacon and chorizo before you cut the beans.
How to serve charro beans, and what to cook with them
In a small bowl or a clay mug of about 1 cup (250 ml), with plenty of broth, next to the main plate so people can spoon them between tacos. Put out warm tortillas, lime wedges, chopped onion and pickled or charred chiles.
At a cookout, pico de gallo and authentic Mexican guacamole are the usual partners. No grill? They go just as well with tacos al pastor or Mexican quesadillas, and for a weeknight dinner, with a scoop of Mexican red rice.
Storing, freezing and reheating
- Fridge. Refrigerate within 2 hours (1 hour if it’s above 90°F/32°C, as it often is at a summer cookout) and keep 3-4 days at 40°F (4°C) or below, per USDA FSIS, in containers no deeper than 3 inches (7.5 cm) so they cool fast.
- Freezer. They freeze well in their broth. FSIS gives 3-4 months for best quality. I freeze flat bags of 2 cups and thaw them in the fridge overnight. The franks soften a little; nothing else changes.
- Reheat. In a pot over medium heat with a splash of water if they thickened, until simmering and 165°F (74°C). Add fresh cilantro when serving, not before storing: reheated, it turns dark and loses its smell.
Frequently asked questions
Do you have to soak pinto beans for charro beans? On the stovetop, yes, either overnight in cold water or with the quick soak (a short boil, then an hour off the heat). In an Instant Pot you can skip it: unsoaked pintos need 15-20 minutes at high pressure, then let the pressure drop on its own for about 20 minutes, per UNL Extension.
What is the difference between charro beans and borracho beans? Beer. Borracho beans are charro beans finished with a bottle or two of beer (12-24 fl oz, 355-710 ml), and they keep some alcohol.
Are charro beans the same as cowboy beans? No. Charro beans are brothy and savory. American cowboy beans are usually thick and often sweet, with ground beef and a barbecue-style sauce.
Can I make charro beans with canned beans? Yes. Use four 15-ounce cans of pinto beans, the liquid from one can and 3 cups of water or stock, and simmer with the meats for 20 minutes.
How many people does a pound of dried beans feed? About 12 as a side at 1 cup each, or 8 as a main at 1½ cups.
How long do charro beans last in the fridge? 3-4 days at 40°F (4°C) or below, according to USDA FSIS. In the freezer they keep their quality for a season, up to about 4 months.
Can I make charro beans in a slow cooker? I cook the beans on the stove or under pressure and use the slow cooker to keep them hot for a party, above 140°F (60°C).
Nutrition per serving
Per main-course bowl (1½ cups, one-eighth of the recipe), calculated ingredient by ingredient from USDA SR Legacy data with the amounts above, using franks and keeping all the rendered fat in the pot:
- Calories: 420 kcal
- Protein: 21 g
- Carbohydrates: 46 g
- Fat: 17 g, of which 6 g saturated
- Fiber: 11 g
- Sugars: 4 g
- Sodium: 920 mg
A 1-cup side is about 280 calories. More than half the sodium comes from the meats; skipping the final ½ tsp of salt brings a bowl down to about 775 mg.
The beans I grew up with in Venezuela were Venezuelan black beans, meatless and a little sweet, and I still eat them most weeks. Charro beans taught me that a pot of pintos can be the reason people show up, as long as the bacon gets its own pan. Josnaisis.