Slow Cooker Roasted Garlic Pinto Bean Mash

For the roasted garlic:
Preheat oven to 375ºF. On a large piece of foil, lay bulbs of garlic. Drizzle olive oil on top of each bulb. Wrap garlic in foil and bake in preheated oven until cloves are soft (about 25 to 30 minutes). Remove the garlic from the oven; open the foil and let the bulbs cool enough to handle. Remove garlic from the cloves (just from 1 1/2 bulbs of garlic; there will be extra). Chop garlic and set aside.

For the slow cooker:
To the slow cooker, add beans, water, roasted garlic, onion, jalapeno, oregano, bay leaf, cumin, smoked paprika, salt and pepper. Stir. Cover with a lid, and cook on the high setting for 6 hours. After beans have cooked for 6 hours, ladle liquid from the pot into a large pouring measuring cup or pitcher. Remove as much liquid as possible until just the beans are showing. Depending on how hot the slow cooker is, there may be 2 to 3 cups of excess liquid. Remove the bay leaf and discard.

Using a potato masher, mash beans. Add bacon, and more salt and pepper to taste. If needed, add some of the reserved liquid for a thinner consistency. Drizzle olive oil on top of the beans.

If serving the beans right out of the pot, drizzles of olive oil and some additional bacon make a pretty garnish. Or just stir the olive oil right into the beans. Serve warm.