Hello friends! Last night I decided I would make some black bean burgers using the recipe I had in my head from my past black bean burger venture. Turns out, my brain recipe was totes wrong. See? It IS a good thing I didn’t post a black bean burger recipe all willy-nilly!

Let’s start this post with a little bit of background information first. I don’t buy canned beans anymore. This is a recent development in my life and I thought I’d do you guys a solid and let you in on a little bean secret: buy them dry, soak them overnight, drain the water and rinse the beans, put them in your crock pot with some spice and cook during the day while you’re at work. Boom. Awesome tasting beans ready for you when you get home. Black beans cook faster than chickpeas so keep that in mind when you’re planning your cook time. Try it first on your day off and get your temperature and cook time right. Depending on how much time I have before I plan on using the beans, I’ll shift the temperature on the crock pot from high 6 hours to low 8 hours.

Onto the recipe! I made a lot of black beans yesterday….a lot. I drained most of the spiced bean liquid out of the crock pot (reserving some for the burgers themselves). In a bowl I mixed diced onion, diced green and red pepper, black beans, juice of 1 lime, garlic powder, cumin, salt and pepper. I used a hand masher to create a semi bean paste but leaving some beans whole so it looked nice. After, I added sun dried tomatoes, a little bit of flax meal and couscous and stirred it all together. I made the couscous last minute because I had put too much liquid into the recipe and needed something to soak it up and also keep the beans together (flax meal helped with this too). The amount of spices and vegetables you use depends on how many beans you’re using. I made enough to feed a freaking army. Guess who’s eating black beans burgers for dinner again tonight? I’m not even mad about it either–they’re delicious. Anywho, I formed the mixture into giant patties with my hands and cooked them in a spray oiled pre heated skillet. I flipped them about 3 times making sure to let the outsides sear in the pan.

Loren and I built our burgers on sprouted wheat bread with rice cheese, red onions, banana peppers, avocado, salsa, greek yogurt and pickles. If we weren’t going out of town for the weekend I would have also added spinach, jalapeno and lots of tomato, but alas, we are and who wants food sitting in your fridge while you’re not home? These ingredients are an end of the line kind of deal, ya dig?