Get your jars ready- however many youre making or what fits in your pressure canner. You can do a combination of different bean recipes and varieties in one canner load, as long as the pressure canning time is the same.
Jars need to be clean but not sterilized, check for cracks or chips. Get your lids, no need to presoak for pressure canning, woohoo! Get rings, make sure theyre not dented or rusty.
Fill your jars with all the ingredients. I line up and do beans in all, onion in all, garlic in all, etc. If you're making my baked bean recipe, there is a lot of ingredient overlap which makes prepping both at once quick.
Get your canner ready, according to your manual.
Fill your jar to the fill line with hot tap water. If your water is safe to drink, then youre good to use it. Otherwise, heat drinking water to hot and steaming, then fill jars.
Wipe rims clean with a clean wet cloth, put the lids and then rings on.
Put your jars in the canner, set it up according to your manual, bring up to pressure, and set your timer for 1 hr and 15 minutes for pints of 1 hr and 30 minutes for quarts.
Keep an eye on it, you'll hear if the pressure is getting too high, in which case, slide it off the element a bit and turn down the heat.
When the timer is done, take it off the heat, let it cool until you can take lid off, according to your manual.
When you can take the lid off, use oven mitts, and open it away from you, its hot!
Using jar tongs/lifters take the jars out of the canner and put on a tea towel somewhere they can sit for 24 hrs.
After 24 hrs, take the rings off, gently test the lids to make sure they're well sealed, give em a wipe if needed, label and put away.
Woohoo! You just canned your own refried beans, with no funky ingredients, for a fraction of the price!!
To serve- heat up a small pan or pot over medium heat. Add in a couple tablespoon of oil, our choices are butter, lard or tallow but use what you have/can. Dump the jar of beans into the pan, mash up to your desired consistency, adding a bit of water or milk if needed to make thinner. Enjoy!