Musings

Archive for the ‘10×10 in 2010’ Category

Who knew a can of black beans, half an onion, half a green pepper, an egg, some breadcrumbs and a handful of spices would be so delicious?  Easy preparation, quick grill on the stove (no fat means no grease spatter), and excellent texture and taste.  One thing to note, to avoid burning them, keep a careful eye.  Because there’s next to no fat, they don’t sizzle like a meat burger as a warning; actually, they sizzle for a few seconds while the surface moisture cooks off, then they, well, sit there.

My tastes run to the spicier, so these were absolutely delicious to me.  The recipe indicates it serves four (4 patties), but even with relatively large burgers, we were able to make six burgers.  Heather didn’t care for them so much – too spicy.  We’ll cut the spice components in half next time we make this recipe.

Ingredients

• 1 can Black Beans (15.5 oz is fine)
• 1/2 Onion (Medium-sized onion)
• 1/2 Green bell pepper (Medium-sized pepper)
• 1/2 Cup bread crumbs
• 1 Tbsp chili powder
• 1 Tbsp cumin
• 1 tsp hot sauce (we used Frank’s RedHot)
• 1 Egg
• 3 Garlic gloves, peeled
  • (We used 3 tsp of garlic powder for the first run, since we were out of garlic, seemed to work ok)

Put an iron griddle on the stove on medium-high heat and let it warm up while mixing the ingredients.

Drain, rinse and then *dry* the black beans to remove excess water.  We missed this step, so had to add an extra cup of bread crumbs to get the mixture to the right consistency for patties.

Put the beans in a medium-size bowl and use a fork to mash them into paste.  Drying the beans will also help with this since they won’t be so slippery.

Use a food processor to blend up the garlic, pepper and onions.

Drop all of the ingredients into the bowl and blend them thoroughly.

Add extra breadcrumbs if needed to get the bean dough sticky enough.  As I mentioned earlier, drying the beans first will help reduce the amount of carbs you’re pouring in at this point.

Make some patties and throw them on the now-heated grill.  You shouldn’t need any spray – the moisture in the burgers was plenty, and we just used a metal spatula to flip them after a couple of minutes.

Throw on a multi-grain bun with some lettuce, tomato and ketchup!