Jill’s Rice Cooker Gallo Pinto (Costa Rican Rice and Beans)

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If you aren’t familiar with gallo pinto, you probably don’t live in Costa Rica! People eat it everyday for breakfast (and throughout the day). Rice and beans. In fact, people love it so much, they made it the national dish here in Costa Rica! I love my food variety, but I don’t think I could ever get sick of it! We take bets in my family on who would get tired of it first. Well, I am about to show you my (gringa) super easy take on the Costa Rican national dish by cooking rice and beans together in a rice cooker. But first off, let’s talk a little about what gallo pinto is and where it comes from.

Gallo pinto — where did it come from?

Although both Nicaragua and Costa Rica claim it as their national dish, no one can agree on the origins of gallo pinto. Folks from Nicaragua claim it came from African slaves who brought it to their Caribbean coast upon arrival in the 17th and 18th centuries. Costa Ricans say it was created in San Sebastian in the capital of San José in the 1930s. Supposedly, a small farmer spent months fattening up a spotted rooster in advance of a dinner party. Well, word got around about this dinner party, and more and more people came. There wasn’t enough chicken to go around, so the cooks decided to whip up a batch of rice mixed with beans to make the meal stretch to feed everyone. Those that didn’t even get a morsel of chicken began to call their meal “spotted rooster.” Gallo pinto translates in English to “spotted rooster.”

I can’t say which story I think is the real origin, but I do know that I am a big fan of gallo pinto! Locals even shorten the name to “pinto,” which for folks from the United States might conjure up the image of either an old car or a big bowl of pinto beans.

However, it isn’t even pronounced the same way. “Pinto” as in gallo pinto does not have the short i sound like “bin” or “did” or the English pronunciation for “pinto.” It has a long e sound like in “bee” or “tree.” That makes it more like “peanto.”

But it must at least have pinto beans in it, right??

Nope, pinto beans aren’t even a thing here. I have never even seen it in the stores where I live. In most regions of Costa Rica, in fact, black beans are used for the beans… although red beans are sometimes used as well. Could you use pinto beans? Sure, no one is judging here. Go with what you have, I say.

Standard approach to making gallo pinto

Now most Ticos (Costa Ricans) start this dish off by cooking up some onions, garlic, and sweet bell pepper in a little oil then tossing in leftover cooked rice, leftover cooked beans, a little bit of the broth from the beans and then finish it off with lots of cilantro and Salsa Lizano.

What is Salsa Lizano, you ask?

It is a common condiment here that is slightly sweet, slightly savory, a bit peppery, and a bit smoky. The most common substitute for it would be Worcestershire Sauce.

Jill’s take on gallo pinto

I am going to show you my super easy approach that starts from uncooked rice, doesn’t use Salsa Lizano, cooks all together in a rice cooker, and makes a delicious, moist, flavorful batch of gallo pinto without sautéing! Who’s in?

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If you don’t have a rice cooker for cooking rice and beans together, that’s okay. I will give you an alternate approach at the end, but if you can make this in a rice cooker, I highly recommend it! My rice cooker is a 10 cup capacity Hamilton Beach, and I make all kind of foods in it other than plain rice. Cakes, mac and cheese, oatmeal, etc. Today, though, we are making gallo pinto in it!

Before you start, double check that yours is around the same size or larger. Don’t try to use a small 4 cup rice cooker.

Also, if you know anything about cooking in rice cookers, it has some special measuring cup for rice that comes with it of some arbitrary size that is specific to that machine. You are supposed to use that special cup and the lines on the rice cooker insert for your liquid that are supposedly calibrated to that machine to make your rice. Whew! We are ignoring all that.

Now we are going to take an easy approach to this. I love meals that basically cook themselves with little effort on my part. Easy peasy meals that are healthy? Yes, please!

Let’s get to cooking!

Using a regular measuring cup, measure out 2 cups of long grain white rice. Now, I want you to rinse your rice. You could rinse it either in a sieve or pour it directly in the rice cooker and rinse it there a few times then pour off as much excess rinse water as possible. There are many reasons to rinse your rice, but in short, it can remove excess starch and yield a better quality product. In my Asian household growing up, we would always rinse our rice (“three times for good measure.”) Got your rice rinsed? Add it to the rice cooker.

Wait! You have to cook the rice first, right? We need leftover rice to make our gallo pinto, right??

Nope. We are starting with uncooked rice for our pinto. The whole thing is going to cook together into delicious yumminess, and each of those rice grains is going to be infused with flavor because they cooked in it all along!

Next up, we are going to need beans. A big pot of deliciously flavored beans. Please don’t use canned beans, as we want our beans to bring deliciousness along for the ride! If you haven’t made my black beans yet, give it a go. Make sure you don’t cook the beans until they completely fall apart. You want them to retain their integrity.

Run your cooked beans through a sieve back into the pot. You want to separate them from the liquid in order to accurately measure out the volume of your beans. Once the beans are sitting on top of the sieve, pour the beans into a measuring cup. You will need 3 cups cooked, drained beans, but don’t toss the bean juice down the drain! You will need this!

Now we need that bean broth (i.e. the broth that is produced when the beans are cooked). Run more beans through the sieve, but this time focus on collecting the bean broth below the sieve. I place my sieve over a measuring cup here. You will need 3 cups of bean broth (i.e. with beans having been removed). Again, you are running the beans and juice through the sieve so that you can accurately measure the volume of each. The sieve is at first used to collect the solids on top then used to collect the liquid on the bottom. In both cases you will need 3 cups.

My broth is cold, as I had the cooked beans stored in the fridge, but this isn’t necessary. You could cook your beans then use them directly in the gallo pinto. Or you could use them directly from the fridge. Both work well.

Now dump the 3 cups beans and 3 cups broth into the rice cooker on top of the rice.

Next up, we need our flavors….

• 1 1/2 cups diced onions
• 3/4 cups diced sweet bell peppers
• 6 cloves minced garlic
• 1 bay leaf

Add all this to your rice cooker. Then I mince up half of a chocolate habañero pepper. This is optional, but I highly recommend using a spicy pepper (jalapeño or otherwise). Add this to the pot.

Then we add the following:

• 1 tablespoon salt (or to taste)
• 1 teaspoon cumin (this is going to help duplicate that smokiness like in Salsa Lizano)
• 1/8 teaspoon ground turmeric
• 1/8 teaspoon ground black pepper

Shouldn’t I sauté my veggies first? It will give my dish more flavor, right?

There is going to be so much flavor in this dish, it really isn’t necessary here. You could do it if it makes you happy, but for this recipe, it really isn’t necessary. I have made it both ways, and I found that in this recipe, it isn’t worth the time. We do, however, want to add in a bit of oil.

Add 2 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil.

Cooking rice and beans together in rice cooker

Okay, so to recap, we have our rice cooker with uncooked rice, cooked beans, cooked bean broth, onions, sweet bell pepper, garlic, bay leaf, salt, cumin, spicy pepper, turmeric, black pepper, and oil.

Now we close the lid and set her to cook. My rice cooker has a setting for “white rice,” and this is the setting I use. One of the other nice things about a rice cooker is that it automatically stops cooking once the rice is done. Mine takes around 50 minutes or so, but yours may be different depending on the model you have and the type of rice you used.

When the rice cooker shuts off, you need to add in your greens. Cilantro and green onions to be specific. Gently fold in 1/3 cup of each.

In this recipe, I prefer to use the regular cilantro, as it lends that specific flavor so characteristic of gallo pinto.

Now put the lid back on and let it set for at least 10 minutes, so that the cilantro and green onions can get acquainted with the gallo pinto. Meanwhile you can be cooking any other sides you wish to have with it. The rice cooker will keep your pinto warm for you. Once you are all set, so is your gallo pinto!

Traditionally gallo pinto in COsta Rica is served with pan fried ripe plantains, a two color scrambled egg that they call “chopped eggs” or huevo picado, along with avocado and sometimes fresh cheese.

Now, let’s talk about some substitutions….

Help, I don’t have enough bean broth!

If you don’t have quite enough bean broth, you could substitute in some vegetable stock or chicken broth

I don’t have a rice cooker.

If you don’t have a rice cooker, you could cook the gallo pinto covered on the stove (cooking rice and beans together) by following the length of time for the simmer described on your bag of rice.

Could I use my Instant Pot?

I would imagine that this recipe would work well in an Instant Pot, but I have not tried this. If you make this in your Instant Pot, let me know in the comments below!