My husband and I celebrated our wedding anniversary yesterday, and I’d say as marriages go, ours is pretty darn good. We have four kids, work pretty hard, and spend most of our time together, which is just fine with us since we really like each other and all that.
Now, I will confess that there has been one steady source of marital conflict through the years, and that is the fact that I gosh darn love a good meatless burger. I can’t really explain it. It must be a throwback to my vegetarian days. I don’t know…I just love them. And I’ll never, ever forget the time, very early in our marriage, that Marlboro Man and I went out to eat and I ordered—gasp—a veggie burger from the menu. The look on his face—I’ll never, ever forget it. From where he stood, he didn’t even know burgers without meat existed. In his experience, a burger was meat, much like air was oxygen or rain was water. It sent shockwaves through his being, and it shook our foundation to the core.
Over the years, I’ve tried to help my beloved cattle rancher husband understand my position: That my love of meatless burgers has no hidden meaning. It doesn’t mean I don’t also love big, beefy burgers. It doesn’t mean I’m going to start making the family drink shots of wheat grass juice every morning. I just like the taste of weird, mushy concoctions meant to resemble hamburger patties. Call me wacky!
I love you, Marlboro Man.
But I also love meatless burgers.
And I know in my heart that those two things can coexist.
On the show I used this homemade black bean recipe, but it’s much easier just to crack open a couple of cans of seasoned black beans. Honestly, either one works great! So if you have a last-minute hankering for black bean burgers, you don’t have to wait four hundred years while you cook a batch from scratch.
Now, I drain the black beans…but I don’t rinse them. I want to have a little bit of that natural bean liquid to work with.
“I want to have a little bit of that natural bean liquid to work with.”
When I was sixteen and wearing Guess jeans and Cyndi Lauper neon fingerless gloves, I never would have believed that I would ever utter—let alone type—the aforementioned sentence.
Life is a journey.
Pour the beans into a bowl…
Then use a fork…
To mash ’em up.
Basically, you want to mash them up until they’re pretty mushy, but still have some whole bean pieces throughout.
So sorta mushy.
But not totally mushy.
But kinda mushy.
But not completely mushy.
Thank you for listening.
To bring in a little substance and texture, measure 1 cup of seasoned breadcrumbs…
And pour them in with the beans.
Now, for extra delicousness, peel an onion…
And grate it up.
I love grating onion whenever I want the flavor of onion, but don’t want big chunks of onion getting in the way of my happiness.
Solutions. I’m all about solutions, people.
Throw in the grated onion…
Then, to bind it all together, crack in an egg! It’s the right thing to do.
Now, I like to spice things up a bit because I’m a middle child and have issues with my third grade teacher. Not really. I just like spicy food. So I add a little chili powder!
Then, for kicks, some salt…
And pepper.
And that right there is a bowl full of deliciousness, baby.
You’re just gonna have to trust me here.
Now, smush it all together until it’s all mixed together…
Then, because I was feeling sassy, I added in a little hot sauce.
Now hear this: A little spice, when it comes to black bean burgers, is really, realllllllly nice.
Now I just want to let the mixture sit for about 5 minutes so it can figure out the meaning of life. While that happens, I’ll get the skillet ready!
Drizzle in a little olive oil…
And a little buttah for flavah.
Now, grab a hunk of the bean mixture…
Form it into a nice, neat patty…
And throw it into the skillet. Now, a note about the size of the patty: Black bean burgers are different from regular beef burgers in that they don’t shrink at all when they cook. So whatever size you make ’em when they go into the skillet will be the size they are when they come out. So if you’re in the habit of making burger patties a little larger than the bun to allow for shrinkage, beware!
Now, I cook the burger on pretty low heat, because I want the middle to get heated through without burning the outside surface.
“Outside surface” is totally redundant, by the way.
So after about 4 to 5 minutes, flip the burger over to the other side and let it cook another 4 to 5 minutes.
Then, to really drive home the lusciousness, I added a couple of slices of Swiss cheese.
After a couple of minutes, I inverted a second skillet on top of the first skillet in order to hasten the cheese melting process.
“Inverted a second skillet on top” – Otherwise known as “a lid.”
Now, during the whole cooking process, I got other burger stuff ready: I grilled a bun with a little butter on a griddle…
Until it was a nice, lovely golden brown.
You can dress the burger however you’d like! I used mayo, not to be confused with Miracle Whip, which we all know is what they serve in Hades…
And some hot sauce. I seriously think I have a problem. Either my body or my psyche needs hot sauce in the worst way. (Pssst. You can use ketchup if you’re more emotionally sound than I!)
Spread it around until it’s all swirly and magnificent.
And are you ready to see the burger now?
Are you sure?
Are you sure you’re sure?
Tada! Man, you’d never know there’s not an ounce of meat in this sucker. And the Swiss cheese is the perfect…well, icing on the cake.
Put it on the bottom bun…
Then I spooned on a little more mayo/hot sauce mixture, followed by some lettuce, and a big slice of tomato.
And the top half of the bun, of course!
Then I realized I forgot the onion—which made everything utterly perfect.
So delicious, and half of this baby was totally satisfying. You can also cut out a lot of the bread (remember that the bean mixture also has breadcrumbs in it) by forgoing the bun and just eating the cheesy patty by itself.
