What's in Your Kitchen?

A few days ago, a friend of mine said that she and her husband were planning to go vegetarian for a week and that she was prepping meals. One of the items she made was black bean burgers. That sounded delicious and the hubs was at work on Sunday, so that was a perfect time to get all up in some veggie foodstuffs making, right?

I found this recipe for Sweet Potato Black Bean Burgers from the Minimalist Baker and it looked GLORIOUS! So I said, "Well duh, I'm totally making this!" But I didn't have black beans. Or nut meal. Or green onions. That's fine. I'll just improvise with what's in my cupboard (because, you know, I'm funemployed. Gotta use what I have!)

In my mind, black beans= chickpeas and kidney beans. Nut meal=coconut flour (from an ill-fated and totally unnecessary attempt at gluten free-ness). Green onions=yellow diced onions.

Cool. Let's do this.

Bake the sweet potatoes and cook the rice. Baked the sweet potatoes. Didn't see the last part of that instruction...
 
Okay, so the recipe says to lightly hand mash the potatoes and half the beans. I'll do them in the food processor. It'll be faster.

Next, add the rest of the beans whole in the recipe. Well, I guess I should break those up a little bit, because those kidney beans are ginormous!

All right, all right, all right! Add the nut meal and adjust as needed to make sure the mixture isn't too moist. Huh. This kinda has the consistency of pumpkin pie filling. And adding more coconut flour is DEFINITELY not unmoistening it... That's okay. When I add the rice, it'll firm right on up.

Oh. I was supposed to cook the rice while roasting the sweet potatoes. Well shit. Definitely didn't do that. Guess everything is on hold until the rice finishes cooking. And of course it's brown rice (healthy and shit) so it takes FOREVER.

Make the patties! Measure them out with a 1/4 cup measure. 1/4 cup definitely isn't enough. I'm HONGRY, so I'm making 1 cup burgers! Oh Jesus, the 1 cup is too much! TOO MUCH! Finish with 1/2 cup. Still big but not unmanageable.

Mega 1 cup burgers

Cooking time! Bake at 375 for 30-45 minutes. That's going to take far too long and I'm starving. So here's what I'll do...I'll bake one and fry one, just to see how they turn out each way.

Baked=Mad Max Fury Road Dry

Fried=Disaster Zone

Final result: Frying was a terrible shitshow. The whole thing totally fell apart, but tasted really good. Baking took almost an hour, held its shape much better but looked a little scorched earthy. Also, not having the fat in it took a little something away from the flavor.


 

I probably had enough mix (dough? batter? filling?) to make 14 patties but because I made a few big ass monster patties, I ended up with 10. Cooked 2 that first day and froze the rest. I did end up making a couple for dinner 2 nights ago and I figured that because they were frozen, they wouldn't fall apart as badly if I fried them (because of course again I was STARVING and didn't want to wait to bake them). They actually held shape pretty well, but soaked up SO MUCH oil they were almost inedible. Don't worry, I powered through.

Verdict: I'd make them again, but actually follow the recipe a little more closely. Until then, I have to figure out what to do with my remaining 6 sweet potato pucks...Maybe I'll bake them for a shorter period so they're softer and use as the protein on a salad?