What's Cooking Wednesday: Meatless Burgers

With grocery prices rising quickly and the rate of heart disease skyrocketing, eating less meat is on the minds of many these days.  Beans are a great alternative.  They are super filling in hungry tummies, plus boast high amounts of protein and fiber.

Several months ago, in search of recipes I could substitute for meat, I found one for bean burgers. Kidney bean burgers, to be exact. Yeah. You can imagine how wonderful they were, can't you?  I like beans and I love kidney beans in chili and other soups and stews, but as burgers...bleh.

Then, one day when I was in the mood for chili I realized I did not have kidney beans but I did have pinto beans, so I subbed those in; the result was great chili! I started thinking that pinto beans would make much better burgers than kidney beans.

Several weeks ago I came across a “faux” corned beef sandwich recipe. It called for pinto beans rather than kidney beans and claimed you would never know you were not eating beef.

Yeah. Right.

So I got a wild hair this week to try this recipe. I hadn't really read it through; I just ripped it out of the publication it was in and added it to my to-try list. I started reading the recipe after I had soaked and cooked my pinto beans for 3 hours total, in two different vats of water, so I was pretty committed at that point.

I saw all kinds of ingredients that I could not stomach on the recipe. Mayonnaise. Cocktail Sauce. Eggs.

Ew.

I soldiered on and decided to make my own burger recipe. It was fantastic!  Several of the kids liked it, including one of the neighborhood kids. I thought it tasted great.

The only thing I can say here is that trying to make one food into another is stupid. Eat a bean burger and like it. Don't eat a bean burger and whine about how it doesn't taste like beef. Of course it doesn't! Keep this mindset and you will likely enjoy it as much as I did.

Pinto Bean Burgers

Ingredients:

3 1/2 c. pinto beans, drained with liquid reserved (2 cans will do, 15 oz each)
3/4 cup dry bread crumbs
1 tsp. garlic powder
1 tsp. oregano
1 tsp. kosher salt

1/2 tsp. ground black pepper

olive oil
burger rolls and fixings of choice

Lightly mash 1 3/4 cups  of the pinto beans.

Mix all pinto beans, including the mashed ones and the whole ones, together with the remaining ingredients except olive oil and fixings.  Use reserved liquid from beans to add moisture as needed.  You want the beans to hold together but not be an overwet mash mess.

Pat the mixture into 8 patties.  I discovered that flatter is better.  The patties get a nice crisp on the outside and if they are a little flatter they get heat all the way through a little easier.  Shoot for about 1/2 inch of thickness.

In a skillet or on a griddle, heat the olive oil over medium heat.  Just enough to cover the pan is fine.  I tried to do it drier with just a cooking spray and the taste was not as good, plus they were too dry when cooked that way.  Some of the oil did get soaked up into the burgers; I just added more.

Pan fry burgers until the outsides are nice and crispy and they are hot all the way through.

***I did not enjoy these cold, so you may want to keep them warm in the oven if you are cooking quite a few. 

Serve with or without buns, with whatever fixings you normally put on burgers.



Cooking with Dried Beans

If you are starting out with dried beans, you'll need several hours. 
For this recipe, use 1 1/4 cups dried beans (about 1/2 pound).

First, rinse the beans and sort out any odd ones.  Then put the good beans into a pot with 4 cups of water.  Bring to a boil and boil for 2 minutes.  Cover and remove from heat, soaking for 1 hour.

Drain beans and rinse again.  Rinse pot.  Put beans back into pot with 3 cups of water.  Simmer for 2 hours or until tender.  Drain beans again, but reserve the liquid this time.

Continue with recipe above.


Well, who's going to try it?