Written and photography by Zak Hansen
Locals spill the beans on this must-have Southern New Mexican side dish
Throughout Southern New Mexico, beans have a guaranteed place at our tables for breakfast, lunch, and dinner—and they have for centuries. What
Written and photography by Zak Hansen
Locals spill the beans on this must-have Southern New Mexican side dish
Throughout Southern New Mexico, beans have a guaranteed place at our tables for breakfast, lunch, and dinner—and they have for centuries. What is it about beans—whole, refried, and otherwise—that make them perhaps the essential New Mexican comfort food?
Perhaps it’s their history. Beans have been a staple of Mesoamerican cultures dating back at least 5,000 years. As one of the Three Sisters—beans, corn, and squash, each a gift from the Creator—beans were a cornerstone of Native American cultures and, in many ways, one reason those cultures flourished.
Corn, on its own, can be toppled by the wind. The light, creeping vines of beans are fragile and need space. Squash vines, clinging to the ground, are easily burned by the sun and need a great deal of moisture to survive.
“…time and love are the essence of all Mexican cooking.”
Many generations before scientists could begin to define concepts like soil acidity, nitrogen, and vitamins—and long before cultures in the climatologically sound East began cultivating these crops—the people who inhabited the desert Southwest had perfected companion planting.
The sturdy stalk of the corn supports the twining vines of the beans, fragile tendrils eager to reach the sun. The beans, in turn, stabilize the corn stalk and fix nitrogen on their roots, improving the soil for the next crop. The shallow-rooted squash vines act as a sort of living mulch, shading and preventing emerging weeds and trapping moisture at the trio’s base.
Beans, corn, and squash also complement each other nutritionally. Corn is rich in carbohydrates and beans are rich in protein, the latter filling the lack of amino acids in the former. The third Sister, squash, provides both vitamins and minerals from its fruit and healthful oil from its seeds.
Given beans helped the area’s ancestral peoples not only survive but thrive, perhaps their importance runs deeper than dinner. It’s in the land, in the soil, in the mythology, making its way into our very DNA. Perhaps we, as Southern New Mexicans, know instinctively to leave a place at our table, always, for the Three Sisters.
Beans don’t only have their place in ancient history; for many families, the preparation of beans is a way to connect with family, both immediate and ancestral. Denise Chávez, an author, poet, and the founder of the Border Book Festival and Casa Camino Real, with deep, multigenerational ties to Las Cruces, calls beans “the food of our people, from this part of the world—the Chihuahuan Desert, the Southwest, and of the multicultural people of New Mexico,” and fondly recalls the omnipresent olla, or clay pot, always full of beans, either soaking or cooking, in her mother’s kitchen.
Denise, like most Mesillero and Cruceño, knows how important the process is in the preparation of proper frijol, a task that very often includes the whole family. Many from the area can recall hours spent at the table alongside mothers, grandmothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins, brothers and sisters, meticulously sorting out rocks, chaff, and other debris from beans before their preparation.
“If you really want to prepare the beans, you lay them out, you clean them, you sort them, you take out the little rocks; you cook them, slowly and gently, in the proper manner and in the proper olla,” Denise says.
This time spent with family, preparing a meal together, is likely why refritos, the perfect Southern New Mexico comfort food, can conjure up so many memories of childhood kitchens and dinner tables.
As Denise puts it, “There’s food, and then there’s food,” heavy emphasis on the latter. “It’s a matter of how you cook it, the state of mind you’re cooking it in, and what your memory and knowledge is of what food is and how it should be.”
Or, as she says in describing her book A Taco Testimony: Meditations on Family, Food and Culture, “time and love are the essence of all Mexican cooking.”
This connection, between food and family and friends, is felt today. According to Kelley Cleary Coffeen, whose Las Cruces roots also go back generations, “Our New Mexican culture offers a sense of community. Part of the reason I love living on the border is that we embrace the culture of our southern neighbors: the generosity, the love of family, hospitality, and cuisine. Cooking is so enjoyable when shared with others…when making a big pot of beans, having family and friends there to help clean and rinse the beans spreads the joy of cooking.”
Kelley certainly knows her beans; she’s authored several cookbooks highlighting the best of the best Southwestern and Mexican cuisine that defines our area.
The Best Beans
So where does one find beans in Las Cruces, prepared with time and