Black Bean Burrito Bowl

What’s a burrito bowl? A burrito without the tortilla wrapping. A bowl of steaming hot rice, topped with savory beans, and each and every taco topping you want—salsa, avocados, cilantro, guacamole, jicama, lettuce or cabbage.

Here’s the thing with a burrito bowl, it can be made in 15 minutes with pantry items and toppings from the fridge. Canned beans, reheated frozen cooked rice, prepared salsa. It’s fast, it’s easy, it works.

Or you can take your burrito bowl to another level and cook your beans from scratch, or even make Spanish rice or cilantro rice.

For this burrito bowl pictured here I cooked up a bag of beautiful Rancho Gordo black beans from scratch, in a cumin, garlic, and bay leaf infused broth. We also experimented with canned beans, which if you use, you will want to reheat with a few extras.

If you go the canned bean route, I strongly recommend using a good quality canned bean. We tested 5 different brands of canned black beans. The Whole Foods 365 brand was completely lacking in flavor; we don’t recommend it. The other four are pictured here. Of these, we like S&W Premium Black Beans, as well as Bush’s Black Beans. The Rosarita and the La Costeña were both like soupy pinto beans, nothing special, and not nearly as good as the S&W and Bush’s.

Black Bean Burrito Bowl Recipe

This recipe makes a lot, but the leftovers keep well. You can easily cut the recipe in half.

Ingredients

• 1  pound dry black beans
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 Tbsp ground cumin
• 4 bay leaves
• 2 teaspoons Kosher salt
• 3 cloves garlic, minced

OR

• 4 15-ounce cans of whole black bean (preferably S&W premium black beans, or Bush's best black beans)
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 cup chopped cilantro

 

• 3 cups, uncooked rice, white or brown
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 1/2 to 6 cups of water, depending on the type of rice (read package)

• Sliced red cabbage
• Ripe avocado, peeled and cut into chunks
• Fresh tomato salsa
• Chopped fresh cilantro
• Queso fresco Mexican farmer's cheese (or Cotija cheese) (skip if cooking vegan)
• Sour cream or crema fresca (skip if cooking vegan)

 

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