By Leslie Brenner

I’m no stranger to Mexican cooking.

I’ve been making my own tortillas for 35 years. I’ve nixtamalized corn in my kitchen, travel frequently in Mexico, keep chicatanas — flying ants from Oaxaca — in my fridge.

But somehow, until recently, I had never stepped back and thought much about Mexico’s geographic bean divide. I’d completely missed out on the fact that there’s another bean — the bayo — that’s way up there in popularity with the two biggies that are much better known in the United States, pinto and frijol negro (black beans).

Here’s the insane thing: Bayo beans are even better than pintos, and they cook up in about half the time. You can usually have bayos on the table in about an hour. Yes, starting from dried beans, and no soaking necessary. With lovely flavor, they’re creamier than pintos, glorious when cooked simply and eaten with their broth, and much easier to turn into fabulous frijoles refritos. I used to stress over making refritos, finding them difficult to master and long to manage. Now I make frijoles refritos — a delicious and easy vegan version, no less — in no-time flat.

In conjunction with recent new masa upgrades, my bayo awakening is life-changing, truly, and I’m going to share all of it with you.

But first you’ll have to understand the beans to buy — and why this remarkable bean is called by a confusing assortment of names. I’ll simplify it best as I can. The names I want you to remember are bayo, mayocoba and peruana.

[Would you rather go straight to the recipe? Here you go.]

OK, let’s back up. I’ve long understood that the most widely-used beans in the southern parts of Mexico are frijoles negros. I’ve tasted how they’re a way of life all over the Yucatán peninsula and in Oaxaca. They’re the beans on the right-hand side of the supermarket display shown in the photo above.

Yet I always thought the rest of Mexico was pinto bean country. (Frijol pinto is shown in the top row center of the photo.)

Funny what’s left out of the bright yellow-and-blue “great deal” sign in front of the bean display at my local Fiesta Mart: the peruanas (also known as mayocobas) you can see on the upper left. Why are we talking about peruanas/mayocobas? Because while they are not technically a bayo bean, they’re so similar to bayos that they’re used pretty much interchangeably by many people.

Oddly, not a lot has been written on Anglophile websites or in English-language cookbooks on Mexico’s other bean-type, or on Mexico’s bean preference by region. In their chapters on beans, my favorite Mexican cookbook authors (Enrique Olvera, Diana Kennedy, Gabriela Cámara) inevitably begin by rhapsodizing about heirloom varieties, but never get around to talking about what kind of beans regular, non-gastronomic types eat on a daily basis in various parts of the country.

“Although there are many varieties of beans in Mexico,” writes another favorite author, Mely Martínez, in The Mexican Home Kitchen, “black beans and pinto beans are the most popular. I always have both in my pantry, and recommend you do the same.” 

But here’s the way Larousse Cocina MX, the website of Larousse Diccionario Encyclopédico de la Gastronomía Mexicana, characterizes the bayo bean (my translation):

“The bean is one of the most used in the country, especially in the Distrito Federal and in other central states.”

The Distrito Federal, of course, is Mexico City. What does Larousse Cocina MX say about mayocobas? It doesn’t even have an entry. Nor does it for frijol peruana.

Larousse’s frijol bayo entry was sent to me by CWB’s resident Mexican cooking expert, Olivia Lopez, who was the first person who opened my eyes about the bayo. Until she mentioned it as her bean of choice for frijoles refritros, I’d never even heard of the bayo bean. Olivia comes, not incidentally, from Colima, a coastal state in that middle part of the country.

What I’ve been able to gather only recently is that pintos are king bean only in the north, including in the regions that border the United States. Between the pintos in the north and the frijoles negros in the south, there is the vast middle: bayo country.

I asked Mely Martinéz (also a friend of Cooks Without Borders) for clarification.

“Frijol bayo is more common in Central Mexico but also in the north,” Mely wrote in a text. “Pinto beans are popular in the far north, and are sometimes labeled bayo, even though they are pinto beans.”

In general, she added, people use the term frijol bayo to describe any of the light-colored beans that turn brown when they cook:

“Even though they could be from another variety. There are other two types of beans in the same color that are very popular in the west coast of Mexico. They are the flor de mayo, which has some pink hues, and the mayocoba, also know as peruano. This last one is a light yellowish beige. With a very creamy texture.”

— Mely Martínez

OK, so bayo is often used generically.

Here, in that case, is my (abridged) translation of the full Larousse Cocina MX entry for bayo beans:

“Frijol bayo (Phaseolus vulgaris)

“A bean variety that comes in shades from light coffee brown to dark coffee brown. Types include acerado, apetito, blanco, garrapato, gordo, grullo, jarocho, maduro, mexicano, panza de puerco, parraleño, perlita rata and zavaleta. Bayos are eaten in many ways: boiled, fried, pounded, and as a filling. The bean is one of the most used in the country, especially in the Distrito Federal and in other central states. In many regions it is used as a substitute for other beans. The bean is found in various colors; the most important types are canela claro, canelo oscuro, rebocero, vaquita and, especially, flor de mayo. The latter is widely used in the Federal District and other central states of the country; in fact, many people maintain that it has the best flavor of all bayos. Flor de mayo tends to be pink in color, but when cooked it becomes light brown. It is also known as a brown bean.”

The more research I did, the more confused I became. Once I started getting the sense that the middle of the country was bayo country, I texted my friend Regino Rojas, a Dallas-based chef who hails from Michoán (in the middle of the country!). “Regino,” I texted, “do you think it would be correct to say that pintos are the most popular bean in the north of Mexico, frijoles negros are most popular in the south, and bayos are the most popular in central Mexico? What's most popular in Michoacán?”

“The most common in my region of Michoacán is mayocoba, also called frijol peruano,” he answered. (The then launched into a hilarious diatribe against Tex-Mex refried pinto beans, but that’s another story.)

Aha! Frijoles mayocobas or peruanos (also called canarios, or canary beans) are one of those light beans that turn brown when cooked that Mely mentioned.

This explains why, at my local Fiesta Mart, there are big bulk bins of exactly three beans: frijol negro, frijol pinto and frijol mayocoba. Mayocoba stands in for bayo: a light-colored bean that turns brown when it cooks.

(Just to geek out for a moment, both bayo beans and mayocobas are Phaseolus vulgaris. But then so are pintos, so that’s not much help.)

OK. I know what you’re thinking. Why don’t you get Steve Sando, the heirloom bean maven who has been profiled in the New Yorker, and whose Rancho Gordo heirloom bean company became one of the hottest food destinations on the web during the pandemic, to weigh in? And why aren’t you telling us about heirloom bayos?

For the record, I have an email out to Sando; hopefully he’ll respond (and I’ll continue trying to reach him). Meanwhile, I just ordered a couple pounds of heirloom mayocobas from Rancho Gordo; it’ll take some time to for them to get to me. I didn’t find any other heirloom bayos on the Rancho Gordo site, but I did find some beautiful-seeming heirloom bayos from another California concern I just turned up: Chili Smith Family Foods. I just ordered four pounds, and will put a call out to them as well, to see what I can learn. (So stay tuned: Hopeful more bean-news will be coming to these pages.)

Well, that’s a lot to digest. And no doubt you want to know how to cook these bad boys.

It’s very simple. Rinse them well and sort them. Put them in a pot with some onion (white, preferably, but not importantly), a couple of slices or half an onion still intact. Throw in four or five cloves of peeled garlic. Cover the beans with three or four inches of water. Bring to a boil and let boil 10 minutes. Turn down to a simmer, cover, and let cook — tasting along the way — until the beans are, as Contramar chef Gabriela Cámara describes it in My Mexico City Kitchen, “custardy.”

In fact, the headnote for her recipe for Frijoles Aguados (Soupy Beans), is one of the best things I’ve read about cooking Mexican beans:

“You need to pay attention and use your senses to guide you when you’re cooking dried beans, because the secret to making really good beans is finding that elusive sweet spot between over- and under-cooking them. A few minutes too long and their skins will split, and they will fall apart. But if you take them off the stove prematurely, they will taste chalky and bland. I’m against the current trend of undercooking beans. The better a bean is cooked, the more complex the flavor. When testing a cooked bean for doneness, bite it and make sure there is no resistance. Once they’re custardy, turn off the heat and let them cool in their broth.”

— Gabriela Cámara, My Mexico City Kitchen

If you want to get fancy, you can toss in some dried oregano or marjoram, or a few toasted dried avocado leaves when you start cooking (toast them on a dry, hot skillet just until fragrant). That’s what Pujol chef Enrique Olvera suggests in his cookbook Tu Casa Mi Casa; Cámara does as well. They impart a beautiful, anise-like scent. Alternatively, you can add fresh epazote (Cámara adds a sprig at the beginning; Olvera uses a whole bunch, but waits till the beans are nearly finished cooking to add them.)

But these are really fine points. Even without any herbs, they will cook up beautifully.

Here are two basic recipes, one for frijoles de olla, another for turning them into refried beans. In the coming days, we’ll be publishing a couple of exciting recipes using the refried bayos, so do check back!

RECIPE: Bayo Beans (Frijoles de Olla II)
RECIPE: Refried Bayo or Mayocoba Beans

And finally, here is a visual guide to Mexico’s beans annotated by Lesley Téllez. It’s from a 2010 post on her excellent website, The Mija Chronicles.