The evolution of a blog. That is what you are seeing. We began this blog project to cook pretty much anything and everything that tasted awesome and amazing and share it with you. Well, I recently went to the doctor and found out that I needed to manage some of my food intake a bit better. I’m in a testing phase of trying to lower my bad cholesterol and increase my good cholesterol and at the same time increase my exercise and be sure that my liver is okay regarding moderate alcohol intake.

So, what I have begun to do is monitor my daily food intake, track the cholesterol and avoid it as much as possible. More on this later and the more experimental and alternative foods we have been preparing, but for now, meatless burgers!

I know that most of you meat lovers are reading this and saying, “gross, no thanks and piss off”. I’m a meat lover. I know it sounds gross to eat a fake burger, but these are good. They are not something frozen you find in your supermarket full of mystery items that taste like a hockey puck soaked in hummus. These are tasty, healthy and easy as heck to make.

I got the idea to do some meatless burgers from a past roommate of mine who is a vegetarian MMA fighter. Her and her boyfriend would make meatless burgers and they looked great. So, I was trying to come up with a way to use more vegetables and make something that would fill the void of meat while I worked on adjusting my habits and getting my cholesterol under control. I plan to eat meat most likely forever, but just in more moderate and reasonable amounts.

I keep thinking about the foods I was eating in the weeks leading up to getting my blood tested and results back and I realize I ate some healthy stuff, but I also ate anything else I wanted to as well and wasn’t exercising in any way shape or form. So I’ve begun a slow increase in exercise and am now watching my foods.

On to the burgers!

I have made these 3 times, always changing something. I began by using this recipe as a foundation and adapting to it: Homemade Black Bean Veggie Burgers

Here is my first Black Bean Based Veggie Burger finished product:

I know this doesn’t look fantastic, but stick around, these tasted great and the ones after tasted even better.

Black Bean Burger Ingredients:

• 1 can drained and rinsed black beans
• 1/2 can drained whole kernel corn
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tbsp curry powder (I was out of cumin, so I just used this)
• 1 tsp thai chili sauce (rooster sauce)
• 2 egg whites (to substitute for 1 egg, making this recipe have no cholesterol and much less, almost no fat)
• 1 tsp of lemon pepper seasoning
• 1/2 medium onion, or more if you prefer
• 1 large bell pepper
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs

1. Heat an oven to 375 degrees. I baked these, but you can pan fry them too, with a little spray non stick or olive oil.
2. Pour rinsed beans in a large bowl. With a pastry blender or fork, or whatever utensil you want, smash the beans until they become a thick and pasty consistency with no chunks.
   

   Black Beans

3. If you have a food processor(which we now do!!!) finely chop up the onion, bell pepper and garlic all at once. If you don’t, just chop them up with a knife until they are thin and tiny.
   

   The Bran 650 about to destroy those veggies

4. Stir the chopped vegetables and whole kernel corn(now or later on the corn, doesn’t matter) into the bean mixture until well mixed.
   

   Mix in the chopped veggies

5. In a separate bowl, add 2 egg yolks and all the spices. whip well with a whisk or fork.
   

   Egg White and Spices Mixture

6. Mix in the egg mixture into the bean and veg mixture.
7. Pour in the bread crumbs and stir until all the bread is moist and absorbed. You may want to add more to get the desired consistency.
   

   Mixing it all together, I added the corn last

8. Once you can form a patty from the mixture grab a handful and shape into a patty like object. Try and make the edges more smooth than I did in my first corn burger picture above. And slightly thicker than that is better too.
9. Place in the oven for 10 minutes on each side, for a total of 20 minutes. Or pan fry for 5-7 minutes on each side.
10. Put on a bun, between some bread and serve. I had mine with no cheese, but added light mayo, ketchup and mustard on Anderson Valley Flax Seed bread.

Okay, so this above procedure was my first attempt at making these. What I took from it was that I need to make them thicker and actually shape them more like a burger and make them how I want them to look in their finalized state. They don’t spread out or shrink much during cooking. On the next batch I made, I omitted the corn, added 1/2 a cup of quinoa and used Cumin instead of Curry Powder exclusively, because I went and bought some.

The third time I tried to make veggie burgers I did it using Garbanzo Beans instead of black beans! And a few other different ingredients, I’ll list them below, but the procedure is still very much the same as above.

Garbanzo Bean Veggie Burgers Ingredients:

• 1 can drained and rinsed garbanzo beans
• 1 tbsp chili powder
• 1 tbsp cumin powder
• 1 tsp curry powder (I figured I’d leave a little in)
• 2 egg whites
• 1 tsp of lemon pepper seasoning
• 1/2 medium onion
• 1/2 cup basil
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 cup of ground Wasa MultiGrain Crackers

Follow most of the steps above for the black bean burgers. You obviously have to grind your own bread crumbs out of the Wasa crackers and add the basil to the veggie mixture.

When I was done and ready to cook them I opted for frying them in a pan with some spray on olive oil instead. I liked this much much better than baking them. Also, using garbanzo beans made them look much more like hamburger once the chili powder was added to the mix. All the pics below…

I plan to make a lot more of these and freeze them next time so I can just whip them out and pan fry and enjoy at my leisure. Some people also add rolled oats, green apples and rice. You can basically experiment once you master the base ingredients and see what you like.

Enjoy!