Black Bean Burgers

Ingredients

Combine the basic bean patty with a binder of your choosing, and add a spice blend. Quantities for the binder and spices here are based on one unit of bean patty mixture.

Basic Bean Patty

• 850g black beans cooked (2x425g cans no salt added black beans),
  • 816g after draining
  • 689g after drying in oven
• Sesame oil (for frying patties)
  • For coating patties, mix 3 tbsp sesame oil with 1 tsp toasted sesame oil

or

• 700g cooked from dry beans

Makes six to eight patties.

Binder

• 1/4 cup vital wheat gluten
• 1/2 cup panko flakes
• Optional, for grilling or flavor: 4 tbsp tahini

Mix panko flakes and vital wheat gluten together.

Tahini can be added if you want to make these a lot fattier. I leave it out when pan frying because I am trying to eat a bit lighter and I don't find that it has an earth-shattering effect on flavor. However, when grilling the tahini is essential as it also makes the patties extremely sticky and robust, and without it they are just slightly too crumbly to cook directly on a grate.

Spices

• 1/2 large white or red onion
• 2 Serrano peppers
• 1 habanero pepper
• 1 Sweet bell pepper (red, orange, yellow — doesn't matter)
• 8 cloves garlic
• 1 tbsp cumin
• 1/2 tbsp maras biberi flakes or aleppo pepper flakes
• 3/4 tsp dried ground ginger
• 1/4 tsp MSG
• 1/2 tsp fine grained sea salt

If you want this to be less spicy, either the habanero or Serrano peppers can be left out (If I had to choose, I'd drop the Serrano peppers as I find a habanero pepper complements the sweet bell pepper more, unless you can get ripe Serrano peppers).

The MSG really puts these over the edge. Without it, they can be a bit "thin" tasting.

Directions

Prepare Canned Beans

Stolen from Serious Eats, canned black beans should be dehydrated a bit.

1. Preheat oven to 350°F (convection oven to 325°F)
2. Drain beans, discarding liquid. Don't rinse.
3. Spread beans on half sheet pan lined with foil or parchment.
4. Place in oven for ~15 minutes

I use a convention oven at 325°F and the beans dry a bit more consistently than with the convection fan off. The beans usually take about 15 minutes to dry on a darkish pan, but I found with a brand new (shiny and bright) aluminum pan I had to increase the drying time by around five minutes.

Prepare Vegetables

1. Dice white onion
2. Dice bell pepper
3. Mince hot peppers and garlic
4. Separately wrap onions and bell pepper in paper towels and gently squeeze to drain some excess moisture. Too much moisture from the bell pepper especially can make the burgers a bit soggy.

Since these are just getting mashed into a patty and don't need to be pretty, I just run the onions and bell pepper through a few pulses in a food chopper.

Combine!

1. Mix dry spices before and beans in bowl before mashing (this seems to help diffuse the spices more consistently).
2. Mash beans to desired consistency in a mixing bowl. Mostly paste with some partially mashed beans is good.
3. Mix in minced garlic and hot peppers
4. Mix in onions
5. Mix in bell pepper
6. Mix in panko/gluten binder
7. If using tahini, mix in last

Grab a ball of the mixture and form into a patty, making sure to work it a bit (which I think makes the gluten link into strands and binds things together better). It should be almost as robust as a murder burger so should be able to handle being squished into whatever shape by hand.

Cook

Pan Frying

1. Preheat pan with a couple tablespoons of sesame oil
2. Brush one side of patty with sesame oil + toasted sesame oil mixture
3. Placing oiled side down, pan fry over medium-high heat for ~3 minutes.
4. Oil top of patty, flip, pan fry additional three minutes
5. Flip patty, add more oil to pan (1Tbsp should be enough), reduce heat to low, cover. Cook two minutes per side.

Grilling

It is important to make these with tahini when grilling.

1. Build decent charcoal fire
2. Brush one side of patty with sesame oil + toasted sesame oil mixture
3. Brush grate with vegetable oil
4. Placing oiled side down on grate, cover grill (with vents open, to keep high heat) and cook for two minutes
5. Oil top side of patty, flip, cook additional two minutes covered
6. Flip patty, cook additional two minutes per side covered

Internal temp should hit around 180°F and the patty should develop a nice char.

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Last Modified: March 15, 2020