Refried Beans: Store-Bought vs. Homemade
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Yesterday morning my husband and I started two batches of refried beans in the crockpot before heading into our office to work. As he was jarring up the finished product last night, I realized it would be a good illustration of just how much a little d-i-y effort can save. Take a look:
We spent $3.97 on a four-pound bag of pinto beans (the onions we used were free), about two minutes putting the beans into a pot to soak overnight and probably another three minutes setting up the crockpots in the morning. I would estimate that my husband spent another 10 minutes transferring the finished refried beans to jars. So, all told, that’s 15 minutes of hands-on time.
From that we got 12 pint jars of beans. 10 went into the freezer for later; 2 were used to make bean burritos for dinner.
Since I haven’t bought refried beans in a while, I headed to the grocery store to check prices. $.89 was the cheapest price that I could find.
So, here’s the side-by-side comparison:
12 cans of homemade refried beans = $3.97
12 cans of store-bought refried beans = 10.68
That’s a $6.71 savings for 15 minutes of work, or the equivalent of being paid $26.84 an hour to toss a few ingredients in a crockpot!
Suddenly find yourself interested in making refried beans? Here’s my recipe.
