Habichuelas Guisadas (Puerto Rican Stewed Beans)

If there’s one Puerto Rican dish you have to try, it’s my mom’s habichuelas guisadas (also known as habichuelas rojas or stewed beans). Made with sofrito, sazon and lots of love, these hearty beans are the definition of comfort when served over a bed of warm rice.

In the Latin world, rice and beans are as classic a pairing as bread and butter. This rule is no exception to Puerto Ricans whether you’re using red beans, black beans, or gandules.

My Puerto Rican family was practically raised on rice, plantains, and habichuelas (the Puerto Rican word for beans). If you enjoy this Puerto Rican rice recipe, chances are you will love my family’s versions of Arroz con Gandules and Arroz con Pollo.

This recipe in particular is a wonderfully convenient family favorite that only takes about 15 minutes to prep. These beans make the easiest weeknight dinner.

What You’ll Need

You will need a few Puerto Rican cooking staples for this dish, so check out the ingredient list below before heading to the store:

• olive oil (or achiote oil) 
• sofrito
• sazon seasoning 
• adobo seasoning
• dried bay leaves
• tomato puree 
• canned red or pink beans (DO NOT DRAIN) 
• vegetable broth (or water) 
• cilantro to garnish 
• salt and pepper to taste

See recipe card for exact quantities.

How to Make Habichuelas Rojas

Using Dry Beans

If you’d like to make this recipe using dried red beans instead of from a can, here are my recommendations:

• Rinse the dried beans and add to a pot of water (using a 1:4 ratio, 1 cup of beans to 4 cups of water)
• Add a sprinkle of salt and some bay leaves to the pot for flavor
• Bring everything to a boil before lowering and simmering for an hour, or until tender
• From there you can follow the recipe as instructed, adding a few cups of the water the beans simmered in (to substitute for the canning liquid)

How to Develop Maximum Flavor (Sofrito & Sazon)

There are a few essential ingredients that will take your habichuelas guisadas from your average can of beans to a truly impressive dish in both flavor and presentation.

For starters, you will need sofrito.

But don’t worry, sofrito isn’t something you need to run to the store and buy. Simply pulse garlic, onion, cilantro, culantro (if you can find it) and peppers in a food processor and you’ve got the secret to many savory Puerto Rican dishes.

This magic sauce is the perfect base for beans as it infuses them with flavor from the start of the cooking process.

The next ingredients that will help create maximum flavor in this dish is sazon. Sazon is a well known Puerto Rican spice blend made up of spices like cumin, achiote, oregano, and garlic powder.

If you can’t find sazon seasoning at your local grocery store, you can create a blend of your own using spices from your pantry.

Variations

There are so many ways to enjoy these habichuelas guisadas that I’ve lost track of all of my favorites.

Here are a few fun ideas to experiment with:

• Spicy – add a jalapeno to your sofrito to give these beans a little kick!
• Pork – many Puerto Ricans will brown a bit of ham at the beginning of this recipe to add a meaty flavor to the dish.
• Amp up the sweetness – soften a diced onion & bell pepper with the sofrito, to add some natural sweetness and more veggies to the beans.
• Potatoes – they is a traditional addition to Puerto Rican beans. If you want to try them out, dice up a yellow potato and add it in just before you add the tomato sauce. This addition helps make the dish even heartier.
• Pimento stuffed olives – these olives are another very traditional Puerto Rican ingredient and I love using them in many of my rice dishes. If you want to incorporate them into this dish, feel free to dice up a quarter cup and add them at the same time as the spices.

Or keep it classic, stick to my recipe and and serve them over a bed of rice with a splash of your favorite hot sauce or pique.

Equipment

Here are the tools I used to make this recipe go smoothly:

• Food processor – this is necessary to blend up the sofrito into a consistent sauce; you can also use an immersion blender or traditional blender if you don’t have a food processor
• Dutch oven or good quality soup pot – I encourage you to use what you have in your home as far as this goes. Here’s my favorite pot to use for this recipe these days.
• A good quality wooden spoon – for mixing things around without scratching your pot.

Storage

This recipe should keep in the fridge in an airtight container for up to 5 days.

Top tip

Looking for a trick to take your habichuelas to the next level? Try swapping the olive oil in this recipe for achiote oil.

Achiote oil is a commonly used Puerto Rican oil infused with annatto seeds or ground annatto powder. Making it from scratch requires only 2 ingredients and less than 30 minutes of your time.

Happy cooking!

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