Black Bean Burgers Recipe

I know that the very words "veggie burger" is an oxymoron to a lot of people, but Chad and I, while we do enjoy the occasional juicy beef patty, also love our veggie burgers.

In a fit of "what to make for dinner" combined with "I really don't want to go the store", I went on the hunt for homemade veggie burger recipes. After all...I had veggies and I had buns. It's just a matter putting the two together somehow.

I combined a couple a recipes and came up with a seriously yummy black bean burger.

1 can black beans, drained and rinsed and mashed
1/2 red bell pepper (I'm sure green would be great as well)
1/2 yellow onion
1 egg
3 cloves of garlic
2 Joseph-size pinches of cumin
3 sprigs cilantro
2 T Thai chili sauce
1 c bread crumbs

Put the mashed black beans in a bowl. In your food processor, toss the bell pepper, onion, egg, garlic and cilantro. Pulse until everything is about the size of chunky salsa. Add to the black beans and mix. Add the cumin and chili sauce. Stir. Add the bread crumbs. Stir again.

At this point your mixture should be the consistency of finely ground beef. If it's still a bit too "wet" then just add more bread crumbs. (I found some recipes that used ground oatmeal...I might do that next time.)

Form the mixture into patties and place on foil. At this point you can either a) put in a 375 oven for 10-20 minutes, then flip and cook for 10-20more minutes, or b) put the foil on your BBQ and follow the same cooking instructions. We noticed that it took a bit longer for them to "brown" on each side if they were thicker, so just use your best judgement.

Serve on a bun with your favorite toppings. (We added a side dish of sweet potato fries. Yuuum.)
We were able to get eight good sized patties out of this recipe. I think we'll do a double batch next time and freeze the extras for quick meals.

These weren't super spicy, so Chad wants to try adding a chili pepper to it next time.

Joseph loved helping with this recipe. He got a kick out of mashing the beans and helping with the food processor. He made the patties until he got grossed out by the sticky mixture residue on his hands. Yep....he's my kid.