Hand-made Veggie Burgers: Southwestern Black Bean

From my new cookbook: Moosewood Restaurant: Cooking for Health (More than 200 Vegetarian and Vegan dishes)

I cannot resist a good burger and fries. I've been feeling guilty about my once-a-week fast food burger habit, so this weekend I opted to go healthier and closer to home. My Moosewood book has five different burger recipes and I love black beans because they remind me of Texas, so I went with these first. This is the only recipe that wasn't vegan, I believe from the inclusion of egg as the binder. I found the black beans in the organic section, as they are a rare thing here; they should be with the regular canned beans on an American grocery store shelf.

Ingredients:

2 teaspoons olive oil
1 cup chopped onions
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon salt
dash of ground pepper
1 cup finely chopped mushrooms
1 cup grated carrots
1 fresh chile, minced
or 1/4 teaspoon cayenne
1/4 cup orange juice
1 cup ground tortilla chips
(mashed until they reach the consistency of course meal)
2 15-oz cans black beans, rinsed and drained
1 large egg, lightly beaten

1. Preheat oven to 375F. Warm the oil in a skillet on medium-high heat. Add the onions and cook for 5 minutes, stirring often. Stir in the cumin, coriander, salt, and pepper and cook until the onions soften, a couple of minutes. Add the mushrooms, carrots, chiles, and orange juice, lower the heat to medium, and cook, stirring occasionally, until tender, about 8 minutes.

(Onions, carrot, mushies, chiles, oj)

2. While the vegetables cook, combine the ground tortilla chips, beans and egg in a large bowl and mash well with a potato masher, or pulse in a food processor and then transfer to a bowl. When the vegetables are tender, drain (if needed) and stir into the bean mixture.

(Chips, beans and egg)

3. Form the burger mixture into six patties (a heaping 1/2 cup per burger) and place on a lightly oiled baking sheet. Bake in a preheated 375F oven for 25 minutes, until firm and lightly crusted.



Moosewood gives lots of serving options as well as recipes to accompany (Sweet Potato, Apple and Chipotle Soup).

9/10