Instant Pot Santa Maria Pinquito Beans

Instant Pot Santa Maria Pinquito Beans recipe. A taste of Santa Maria, ready in about an hour in the pressure cooker.

My wife knows me. What did she get me on a trip to San Fransisco? Beans. Not just any beans - pinquito beans from Rancho Gordo at the Ferry Market. I have wanted to try these beans for years; they are an essential side dish for California's Santa Maria Tri-Tip Barbecue, but I've never found them locally.

Enter Rancho Gordo, the internet's gourmet bean source. However, instead of ordering them online, my wife bought them at the source and flew them home to Ohio.
Now, to ensure I had the recipe right, I needed more than one bag of beans…so I ordered a few more online. Plus some black beans, small red beans, and pinto beans. Hey, I need them for research.
The pinquito beans were worth the extra effort - they're smaller and meatier than pinto beans. I know, I know, that description doesn't help much. Trust me - they taste fantastic and are worth seeking out. I can see why they're such a hit in Santa Maria.
I used my bean secret weapon - an Instant Pot pressure cooker - to cook them in about an hour. Ready for a brothy bowl of Santa Maria-style pinquito beans, perfect to serve with Santa Maria Tri-Tip? Here they are.

🥫Ingredients

• 4 ounces bacon, diced
• 1 large onion, minced
• 3 cloves garlic, crushed
• ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
• 1 pound dry Santa Maria Pinquito Beans, sorted and rinsed
• 1 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 1 tablespoon dry mustard
• ½ teaspoon baking soda
• 6 cups water
• 8-ounce can Tomato Sauce

How to make Instant Pot Santa Maria Pinquito Beans

Brown the bacon

Spread the bacon out in the bottom of an Instant Pot or other pressure cooker, then set it for Sauté mode - Medium (use medium-low heat with a stovetop pressure cooker). Cook the bacon, stirring often, until the bacon is starting to brown, about 5 minutes.

Sauté the aromatics in the bacon fat

Stir the onion and garlic into the bacon in the pressure cooker pot, and sprinkle with the ½ teaspoon of salt. Sauté until the onion softens, about five minutes.

Everything in the pot

Add the sorted and rinsed pinquito beans to the pot, then sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of salt, the mustard powder, and the baking soda. Stir in the water, and then stir in the tomatoes.

Pressure cook the beans for 35 minutes with a Natural Release

Lock the lid and pressure cook at high pressure for 35 minutes in an Instant Pot or other electric pressure cooker or for 30 minutes in a stovetop PC. (On the Instant Pot, use the Manual, Pressure Cook, or Pressure Cook - Custom setting, and set the cooking time to 35 minutes.) Let the pressure come down naturally, about 20 minutes more. (You can quick release any remaining pressure after 15 minutes if you are in a hurry.) Remove the lid, tilting it away to avoid hot steam.

Serve

Serve the beans, passing hot sauce at the table if you want an extra kick of heat.

🥘 Substitutions

Want a vegetarian version? Replace the bacon with 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil so there's some fat to sauté the onion.
Don't have bacon? You can substitute ham or a smoked ham hock.
Pinquito beans are also called small pink beans. Can't find pinquito beans? Use pinto beans or navy beans. Both cook in about the same amount of time as the pinquito beans and though they have different flavors, they work well with this recipe.

🛠 Equipment

A 6-quart pressure cooker. Pressure cooker dried beans are one of the reasons I became a pressure cooker convert and why I love my Instant Pot so much. Try them - you'll never go back to canned beans. (OK, maybe you will, for convenience - but see the Storage section for tips on make-ahead freezer beans.)

📏Scaling

This recipe scales down easily - cut everything in half if you don't need as many beans or have a 3-quart pressure cooker. Scaling up runs into space issues; if you have an 8-quart pressure cooker, you can double this recipe, but it's too much to fit in a 6-quart pressure cooker.

Sorting Beans

Beans are an agricultural product, and stuff tends to creep in when processed. Beans should always be sorted and rinsed before use to remove twigs, stones, clumps of dirt, or broken beans.  
To sort the beans, I pour them out on one side of a rimmed baking sheet (a half-sheet pan) to keep the beans from escaping. Then I slowly run my fingers through the pile of beans, pulling them towards me on the sheet. I watch the beans as they move, looking for anything that doesn't seem right. If I see something, I poke around in the beans until I find what caught my eye and discard it. I repeat this several times until I'm satisfied everything is out of the beans.  
Then, I dump the beans into a fine mesh strainer and rinse them under cold running water to wash off any dirt or dust still on them.  
Now, the beans are sorted, rinsed, and ready for soaking or cooking.

🤨 Soaking Santa Maria pinquito beans?

I always get the "to soak, or not to soak?" question. I don't soak my Santa Maria pinquito beans. They don't need an overnight soak and cook to tenderness in 35 minutes at high pressure.
That doesn't mean you can't soak the beans. They turn out fine, though the bean broth isn't quite as full-bodied. Soaked beans cook much quicker, 12 minutes at high pressure. I use that when cooking the beans with other ingredients, where the shorter cooking time keeps me from overcooking the whole dish to get the beans tender.

💡Tips and Tricks

• Salt your bean water! "Salt toughens beans" is a myth. Salting before cooking helps season the beans all the way through as they cook.
• Acid does make beans tough, though, and tomatoes are acidic. So, to balance out the acid in the tomatoes, I add Baking soda. (Remember Chemistry class? Baking soda is a base, counteracting the acid in the tomatoes).
• If your beans are still tough when the cooking time is over, especially any "floaters" at the top of the pot, stir the beans, lock the lid, and pressure cook for another five minutes. Older beans take longer to cook, and if the beans have been sitting on the shelf at your store for a while, they may need extra time.
• Simmer to thicken: If you have the time and want thicker bean liquid, simmer the beans for 20 minutes after pressure cooking. I set my Instant Pot to Sauté mode, adjusted it to low, set the timer to 20 minutes, and left the lid off to let the broth evaporate.

☃️ Storing Leftover Beans

A 2-cup container of beans, with cooking liquid, replaces a 15-ounce can of beans from the grocery store. They'll last in the refrigerator for a few days and freeze for up to 6 months. I always make extra beans and freeze the leftovers for use in other recipes. Freezer beans are ready to use with about 5 minutes in the microwave and are so much better than canned.

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