Vegan Crockpot Refried Beans (Oil Free)

Crockpot cooking is not only delightfully easy but with the crockpot liners, cleanup requires throwing away a bag vs. hours of soaking, scrubbing, soaking, etc. I have found these bags in the same section as the foil and zipper lock bags at the grocery store.  Typically, they are next to the oven roasting bags. 

Anyways, I developed this recipe after numerous tries of trying other recipes for vegan refried beans.  This is the best way I have found.  But please add or remove ingredients based on your liking.  I would suggest to you to keep the jalepenos in the recipe, however.  The flavor is amazing and the heat is rather minimal.  My mother cannot tolerate any amount of heat in her food--she even makes a face!  So when I shared this recipe with her, I suggested that she keep the stem on the jalepeno and just split it down the middle.  That way she can remove the jalepeno after the beans have finished cooking.  Though I suspect she removes it earlier then that!  Beans still turned out wonderful and no one ever believes there is no oil, lard, chicken/beef broth.  Ahhh...life's little successes!

These beans last about a week or so in the fridge and one month in the freezer...but why would you have leftovers?  I never do. 

Ingredients
15 oz. bag dried pinto beans, washed and picked over
2 jalepenos, roughly chopped (I leave the seeds in because the heat seems to subside as the beans cook.  The flavor leftover from the peppers is still pretty great!)
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, smashed and roughly chopped
1 Tbs Italian seasoning or oregano (whatever is already in your pantry)
2 Tbs nutritional yeast
1 Tbs Flax seed

Place the first 5 ingredients in the crockpot (lined with a bag in you have one) and add enough water to just cover beans, plus 2 inches.

Turn the crockpot on high for 2 hours.  Then turn to low for 8 hours.  You may want to check just to make sure that the beans haven't soaked up all of the water.  If the beans look dry and you still have a few hours, stir in 1-2 cups of water. 

After 10 hours (total cooking time), remove any remaining liquid sitting the top of the beans.  Reserve this liquid however until after mashing. 

Now I mash my beans in segments.  Take a few ladles of beans and place them in your storage container of choice.  Mash the beans to your preferred consistency.  Then add more beans, mash, and repeat until all of your beans have been transferred to their resting place and mashed.  At this point, add your nutritional yeast and flax seed.  These two ingredients add depth of flavor without adding salt! Muahahah--down salt demons!

I will set everything up to start at 8:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. and it is ready for me in the morning before work!

I like to eat these beans as a snack at work, slathered on a piece of lavash or stuffed in a bell pepper with some sauteed onion, mushroom and kale--but that's a recipe for another day.