3- Step Black Bean Burgers

I started making Black Bean Burgers when I was 20. I was a "Vegetarian" for almost 2 years at that point for reasons I will not get into right now. I had researched and tried about a dozen recipes until I finally just decided to do my own thing. Then I tried about a dozen of "my own thing-recipes" and I'm sure you could guess how a few of those turned out. 

So, after a dozen and one tries here's my favorite recipe.

Step 1: 

Beans and Carrots

You can buy canned beans, but I prefer dried beans in a Crockpot all day to cans. Either will work and either will taste good. 

Carrots are the same way either buy a can of carrots or buy a bag for a whopping 94 cents and boils half of them. 

Cook both and mash together. Be careful not to mash all the beans completely (unless you like them that way).

Step 2: 

Oil, Eggs, Extras

If you are a Vegan you obviously can not use eggs. For the egg part you can simply use oil (that's what I did last time I made them) or you can make flax eggs or another alternative. 

For this step just add 3 Tbs of oil (without egg) or 1 Tbs (with 1 egg). 

Chop any veggies, other than carrots, that you want in the meat and add to your mixture. 

Onions, Green Bell Peppers, and Spinach are very common add-ins.

Step 3:

Patty-in! Patty-in! Patty-in! Yah!

Make your patties! Be sure not to make them too thick or thin. About 1/2 an inch should cook just fine. 

At this point you can either bake them in the oven at 350° for about 6 minutes, or you can fry them on medium-high temperature at about four minutes per side. 

If you use 1 can of black beans this should yield about 3-4 patties. I make large batches of black beans* in my Crockpot and use what I need until it runs out. Each batch of patties uses about 2 1/2 cups per batch. 

*Side Note: I bake my beans in beef broth to make it taste more like a burger or if I do navy beans I use chicken broth (for faux chicken sandwiches, of course). Soy sauce is good too! 

**Occasionally a Tbs of peanut butter baked in adds some protein and tastes really good with a raspberry vinegarette, and arugula.