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.

New Recipe! It's my favorite Mac-n-Cheese

I have become known for making Chicken Spaghetti for as my friend Olivia puts it, "any occasion that involves more than four people, she makes chicken spaghetti." Then as the discussion continued, Emily added that I made something different for our Passover Celebration Dinner, which included, macaroni and cheese and chicken. So, again, it was a form or chicken, noodles, and cheese. I have to say I am extremely fond of the combination, the noodles and cheese part especially!

All of that has nothing to do with this recipe, I just thought I would give you a little bit of insight on my love for cheese and noodles and how many recipes I would love to come up with, and share, but I'll stick to this one first!

Ingredients:
French Fried Onions
Velveeta Cheese
Shell Noodles
Vegetable Oil
Rotel, and I use the original

Optional Ingredients:
Salt and Pepper to taste
Milk (no more than 1/8 cup, just to make it slightly creamier)
Butter (But really you don't need it)

Directions:
Cube the Velveeta Cheese and Mix in a Medium pan with the Rotel

You should mix it on Medium-Low until the consistency looks about like this:

While you are mixing these two boil and get your noodles ready (this is where the vegetable oil comes in I always put literally a dash of vegetable oil in my water right before I put the noodles in, so that they don't stick to the bottom or sides)

In a separate small bowl mix 1/2 Cup of French Fried Onions with about a TBS of the cheese and Rotel Mixture

When both the noodles and Velveeta sauce are ready, put them in a baking dish. I use a circle CorningWare dish. CorningWare and Pyrex are my two favorite things to cook and store food in.

Top with the French Fried Onions and Velveeta mixture

Bake at 350 degrees for 12-15 minutes.

Enjoy!