How Does Taco Bell Rehydrate Their Beans?

Taco Bell serves thousands of pounds of refried beans every single day. If you assume there is someone in the back kitchen soaking raw pinto beans overnight and mashing them by hand, you are very mistaken.

The refried beans at Taco Bell are actually one of the most brilliant pieces of food science in the industry. If you work the prep shift, here is the secret to how the beans are made.

They Arrive Dehydrated

The beans arrive at the store in massive, lightweight plastic bags. Inside the bag, they look like tiny, dry, brown pellets or flakes. The beans have already been cooked, mashed, and then completely dehydrated at a corporate factory.

This saves the franchise an astronomical amount of money on shipping because they aren’t paying to transport heavy water weight across the country.

The Rehydration Process

When it is time to prep a new batch of beans for the makeline, the prep cook uses a highly standardized rehydration process:

1. The Water: The cook fills a massive metal pan with a highly specific, measured amount of boiling hot water (usually drawn from a dedicated Bunn hot water tower).
2. The Dump: The dry bean pellets are dumped directly into the boiling water.
3. The Mix: Using a long metal whisk or a specialized stirring tool, the cook vigorously stirs the mixture. At first, it looks like a watery soup.
4. The Rest (The Magic): The pan is covered with a metal lid and placed into a heated holding cabinet. Over the next 45 minutes, the dry pellets absorb the boiling water, swelling up and magically transforming into thick, creamy refried beans.

By the time the pan is pulled out of the heater and placed onto the assembly line, the texture is indistinguishable from beans that were mashed from scratch.