A hearty bean stew of La Rioja built on the caparron, a small, round, thin-skinned red bean grown around the mountain town of Anguiano. The beans are slow-simmered until creamy and served with their sacramentos, the cured pork that flavors the pot: chorizo, blood sausage, pork ribs, and fat. The meats are usually cooked apart and added to the beans so each keeps its character. It is the warming one-pot main of the Rioja highlands in the cold months.
The caparron is a local landrace of red bean long cultivated in the cool Najerilla valley around Anguiano, where a yearly festival honors it. The town's beans, marketed as Alubia de Anguiano, gained European Protected Designation of Origin recognition in 2022. The dish is tied to the autumn pig slaughter, the matanza, when households put up chorizo, blood sausage, and salted cuts for winter, providing the very meats that go into the pot.
A deep bowl of small dark-red beans grown silky and whole in a thick, paprika-tinged broth, with chunks of chorizo, dark morcilla, and soft pork on top. The beans break to a creamy interior while the skins stay intact. Salty, smoky, and rich from the cured meats, with the faint sweetness of the blood sausage; eaten with a spoon, a piece of meat to each few beans, with a pickled guindilla pepper alongside to cut the fat.
Caparrones are thin-skinned and starchy, so they cook to creaminess relatively fast and release starch that thickens the broth on their own. They are simmered very gently, never at a hard boil, which would burst the delicate skins; a splash of cold water added during cooking, the asustar or scaring trick, briefly drops the temperature to keep the skins from splitting. The sacramentos are simmered separately first so their rendered fat and pimenton do not cloud or grease the beans, then added near the end to perfume the pot while the beans finish absorbing the savory broth.
Variations
The richest versions pile on a full compango of chorizo, morcilla, rib, fatback, and sometimes pig's trotter, ear, or tail; a plainer pot uses just chorizo and bacon. Some cooks add a little onion, garlic, and pimenton sofrito to the beans. Caparrones are a sibling to Asturian fabada and the wider family of Spanish bean potajes, but the small red Anguiano bean, rather than a large white one, is what sets the Rioja version apart.
On the Palate
Where Caparrones sits in the Spanish flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 4How it's made
7 steps · 15 min
- 1150 min
Soak 400g caparron beans in plenty of cold water overnight, then drain.
- 210 min
Put the beans in a pot, cover with fresh cold water, and bring slowly to a gentle simmer, skimming any foam.
- 315 min
Cook the chorizo, morcilla, pork ribs, and a piece of fatback in a separate pot of simmering water to render some fat and firm them up.
- 4120 min
Keep the beans at a bare simmer for about 2 hours, adding a splash of cold water two or three times to scare them and keep the skins whole; never let it boil hard.
Watch outKeep the beans at a bare simmer and splash in cold water two or three times to 'scare' them — the thin skins burst at a hard boil, so that temperature drop keeps them whole.
- 55 min
When the beans are creamy, add the part-cooked meats and a little of their cooking liquid to the bean pot.
- 625 min
Simmer together gently for another 20 to 30 minutes so the beans take on the meat flavor and the broth thickens, shaking the pot rather than stirring.
Watch outCook the sacramentos separately first, then add near the end — added raw, their rendered fat and pimenton would cloud and grease the delicate bean broth.
- 75 min
Season with salt, rest off the heat for a few minutes, and serve hot with pickled guindilla peppers.
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