I’ve looked for black-bean burger recipes before. They are common but usually tedious. There are usually three to five steps of eleven to twenty steps that employ drying, crushing, freezing, and mixing and they usually include powders and poultices that aren’t in my pantry. This is the first one in a long time that I’ve wanted to try. It’s from LifeHacker and you can find it here
The key to making these burgers is in the treatment of the beans. I’ve seen plenty of recipes that say that you can’t make this recipe with anything but dried black beans. And I’ve seen recipes that say you can use a regular can of beans. Just toast them at 210° for ninety minutes and let them cool then use a mortar and pestle made in Nicaragua to lightly crush them to the consistency of kinako powder. Right. I’m’a gonna do dat. Not. Eviscerating them in a skillet until there’s no more steam rising worked out just fine.
The only substantial ingredients change I made was one substitution. We don’t keep mayo in the house. Not even for cooking. What we do keep in the house is Laughing Cow cream cheese wedges. I used two of those instead of the mayo.
And I made one substitution in the method of cooking. Like with my fish cakes, I find that I get better results by first cooking them in the oven at 400°F on parchment paper for 20 minutes. Then I transfer them to the skillet to crisp the outside. This is also where I add sliced cheese to the top of mine. And it’s also why it took me forty minutes to make thirty minute burgers. But I think that it’s a good trade; time for consistency.
I would share a picture of my efforts, but the burgers somehow disappeared with only the sound of ‘yummm’ echoing through the kitchen. Instead, I’ll use the original photo from A.A. Newton.
On a separate note, I thought I do a little monetary valuationing on this recipe. The spices and the hot sauce were too small in quantity to assign a value to. But the rest:
| 15 oz black beans | 1.00 |
| 4 oz green chiles | 1.35 |
| 4 oz walnuts | 1.00 |
| 4 oz oats | .10 |
| 1.5 0z creamcheese | .35 |
| Total | 3.80 |
So, it’s more expensive than 80/20 ground beef but less expensive than 85/15. Today.
