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Friday, September 5, 2008

Food Storage Friday: Black Bean Burgers

If you've never had Chili's black bean burgers, you are totally missing out. They are amazing! These are not Chili's burgers! But they are good too. I slightly modified this recipe from Epicurious.com to make them food storage friendly.



Ingredients: Black beans, bread crumbs, salsa, chili powder, cumin, Tabasco sauce. Missing from the picture, but totally important is onion powder!

I prepared these beans the same as the pinto beans for refried beans. I rinsed them, soaked them overnight, drained them, and then cooked them, simmering on the stove for a couple hours until they were soft. Then I put half into a freezer bag and stuck in the freezer, and set these aside for burgers. Of course you could use a couple of cans of beans instead.



Make sure you drain the liquid, you don't want excessive liquid because your burgers won't stick together. Mash with a fork or potato masher.



Until it's all mashed up nice like this. The insides of black beans are lighter than the outsides, so mashing it changes the color of the whole. This is normal!



Now add the bread crumbs. This is what will hold your burgers together, so if you may need to add more or less depending on altitude/humidity etc.



Add your salsa and cumin



Onion powder



Tabasco sauce, and a little salt and pepper wouldn't hurt either.



Mash it all together until well combined.



Now shape your burgers into patties. You might need to add more bread crumbs if your burgers aren't combining properly.



I shape the burgers according to the size of our buns. They won't shrink like meat burgers do, so you can estimate pretty easily.



Pop them on the grill over low heat. You can cook these on a skillet over your stove too. Add a little oil to your skillet. As always, spray your grill with cooking spray to help the burgers to not stick. Especially important with bean burgers because they don't combine as well.



One thing that helps is drizzling a little oil over the burgers. Just to help them stay together and not stick. But that's personal preference, it certainly doesn't need it.




Flip the burgers after about 3 minutes. You can cook them longer to develop a darker crust if you want, but we were really hungry. Since they are made completely of beans there's no internal temperature to reach, you are basically warming them up.



When done, p lace a burger on a toasted bun and top with some salsa. Or whatever toppings you want if you are rotating!



Like this tzatziki sauce. Yum.



Black Bean Burgers
adapted from Epicurious.com

3 cups black beans, prepared
1/2 cup dry bread crumbs
2 Tbsp plus 1/2 cup chunky salsa for topping
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp Tabasco sauce


Prepare the beans, if using dry. Drain liquid from cans or prepared beans. Mash beans, add ingredients mixing well together. Form into patties and cook on a skillet over the stove in a little oil, or on the grill. Be careful when flipping so they won't fall apart. Cook on a grill over low heat for 3 minutes on each side or until they develop the crust you want. Top with salsa or other toppings. Enjoy!

4 comments:

AllisonK said...

Abs, these look fantastic!

Aleasha said...

these look great. i am going to give these a try this week.

Heather O. said...

About how many burgers does 3 cups black beans make? It looks like you had 5 on the grill.

Abs said...

We had 2 big ones and three little ones. But our big ones were really really thick and made for bigger buns. The original recipe made 2 burgers using 1 can of beans. So I would say that this recipe could make 6 normal size burgers. But please don't sue me if I'm wrong.