All I have wanted all week is a great black bean burger. I finally had time (While catching up on Shameless, of course) to start what I thought was going to be a test batch, but ended up being awesome. YAY! I love when that happens.

Now, these are of course, ugly. Ideally I would have wanted to make a more patty shaped burger, but I decided that in order to that, my mix would have to be too dry, and I don’t like dry foods. So I opted for a more “drop biscuit” approach to these patties, and then I served them with chipotle sour cream, homemade quick guac and some pickled jalapenos.

Makes – 10 patties (or 40 bite size for apps!)

What to gather –

3 15-16 ounce cans of black beans (I like Trader Joe’s Cuban style with onions) drained.
1 cup of oats
1 cup of whole wheat flour
1 small zucchini, diced roughly
1 poblano pepper, diced roughly
3/4 bunch scallions, roughly chopped
2 eggs
4-5 cloves garlic, chopped roughly
1 1/2 tsp cumin
3/4 bunch cilantro
good quality olive oil (or oil of choice. I would have used safflower but it had gone rancid)
fresh ground S&P
3 Tablespoons hot sauce. I like things really hot, so I used one of my favorite hot sauce brands –
Heartbreaking Dawns Trinidad Scorpion Sauce SO GOOD.

Optional Toppings –

Oaxaca cheese

Chipotle Sour Cream
1 TB powdered chipotle peppers to 1 cup reduced fat sour cream, stir

Avocado Topping
1 avocado, pitted and gutted in to a bowl
1 1/2 TB lime juice
1/4 bunch cilantro, roughly chopped
fresh ground S&P to taste
(Smush everything together in a bowl)

Pickled Jalapeños, minced

Where to begin –

Heat some oil in a skillet to medium heat and add garlic and let cook for a couple minutes, then add zucchini, scallions and peppers and cook for about 5 minutes, or until they are just starting to get soft. Season with salt, pepper, cumin, and hot sauce.

Chuck everything in to a food processor with the cilantro and pulse.

The add in the eggs and oats and pulse a couple more times.

In a large bowl, mash your drained black beans and dump in the mix from the food processor. Add a cup of whole wheat flour and mix well. Evidently I got really excited about life at this point, because I didn’t take a picture of the finished mix. It was ugly, you get the idea.

Now, I went ahead and shaped 6 patties roughly and baked them at 375 for 10 minutes just to get them solid and then stacked them in wax paper and put them in the freezer for nights I come home starving and don’t have time to cook. I will be able to take them out and warm them in a skillet for a couple minutes on each side, and have a nice healthy dinner.

But for now, I am feeling less healthy, and have decided to fry the remaining 4 of these bitches in a little bit of oil in a skillet.

How yummy does that look!?

Clearly at this point you can do whatever you want with the thing. You can get a bun and stack some avocado slices and pickled onions, you can do salsa, chipotle mayo, whatever you like. At this moment, I put some Oaxaca cheese on top to melt in the skillet, and topped with chipotle sour cream, quickie guac, and some pickled jalapenos i made in the fall with my final garden harvest. It was absolutely divine, and satisfied my super specific craving. And oh yeah, it was spicy as hell. Yes!