bean burgers
(vegan)

recipe by mb

just the recipe

what I was looking for

Having just returned from a vacation I wanted something easy to make and low‑maintenance to eat, so burgers seemed like a good plan. Unfortunately, while I was on this vacation my diet was seriously lacking in vegetables, so I felt the need to eat some good, healthy food. Veggie burgers it is!

what I made

For this I went straight to the numero uno go-to cookbook in my life, The Joy of Cooking (Scribner 2006, page 107). It might seem like a strange choice, considering how many vegetarian cookbooks I own, but I've found that Joy is generally the best place to go when it's my first time cooking anything. The recipes are easy to read, well laid out, and I almost always love what's in there. It's my kitchen bible, what can I say.

grades for my version

healthy	A	Filled with beans, veggies, and brown rice, this is about as good as it gets.
fast	B	It takes a little while to chop/shred the veggies, fry them up, and then mix everything together. But even so this can definitely fit into the weeknight meal category.
easy	A	A total novice could conquer this with no worries.
cheap	A	Vegetables are cheap. Rice in bulk is cheap. Combine them and everything in this recipe is still cheap.
delicious	A-	They needed more salt, which is my fault for not tasting better.

yield

6 burgers

equipment

    frying pan

    big bowl

    nonstick frying pan

the recipe

Now this is normally where the giant comparison table goes, but this week my recipe doesn't have one. I followed all the instructions exactly, didn't change any of the ingredients, and ended up with exactly the product that was sold to me.

Strange, huh?

Let me explain. See, for the most part, I have some experience cooking everything that I have made for this website. Pasta, pies, salads ... all stuff that I've dealt with before. But I have never made veggie burgers before. I found myself treading in foreign waters, feeling uncomfortable, and desperately hoping that my first attempt wasn't going to be a total failure.

So what's the one way to really insure that nothing's going to go wrong? That I'm not going to royally screw up somehow? Follow the recipe exactly.

I'm saying all this because I want to make something very clear ... we're not trying to tell you that you should always cook by the seat of your pants. We're simply trying to show that often the recipes you cook from will better fit your life if you change them somehow.

For something like this I felt most comfortable simply following the recipe and there is nothing wrong with that.

olive oil	2 teaspoons
chopped onion	1 cup
garlic	4 cloves, chopped fine
grated carrots	½ cup
chili powder	1 teaspoon
ground cumin	½ teaspoon
black beans	2 cans (Goya blue label are a favorite) or 3 cups of cooked dried black beans
Dijon mustard	2 Tablespoons
soy sauce	2 Tablespoons
ketchup	2 Tablespoons
parsley, chopped fine	2 Tablespoons
cooked brown rice	1 ½ cups
salt	to taste
pepper	to taste
vegetable oil	1 teaspoon

    Put the olive oil in a large frying pan over medium heat.

Add the onions and the garlic to the frying pan and cook them until the onions are soft but not brown.

Add the carrots, chili powder, and cumin and cook the mixture over low heat until the carrots begin to soften.

Remove the pan from the heat; allow everything to cool down.

    In a large bowl, mash together the beans, mustard, soy sauce, ketchup, and parsley.

Add the veggie mixture from the frying pan and the cooked brown rice to the bean mixture in the bowl.

Stir everything together and season it with salt and pepper.

    Heat the vegetable oil in a nonstick frying pan over medium-low heat, then add a spoonful of veggie burger mix, flattening the top to create a burger shape.

Fry the burger for about 7 minutes, until it's brown and crispy. Then flip it over and do the same to the other side.

Repeat for the other 5 burgers, or cook more than one in parallel.

Serve the burger on a whole-wheat bun with embellishments of your choice (mine were lettuce, tomato, and smoked gouda) and a side of fries.

Questions? Comments? Corrections?
Suggestions? Contributions?
Please let us know!