Veggie burgers. Black bean burgers. Even the elusive Santa Fe burger. Veggie burgers have many names (and lots o’ recipes), yet I had never tried one.
So I decided to take the veggie burger plunge and use my humble cooking “skills” to craft a mouth-watering black bean burger. But first, an eco-footnote…
It takes a LOT more resources to get a pound of hamburger meat than to make a vegetarian bean burger. GoVeg (a completely unbiased website) had this to say on the matter…
It takes 5,000 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat, while growing 1 pound of wheat only requires 25 gallons. A totally vegetarian diet requires only 300 gallons of water per day, while a meat-eating diet requires more than 4,000 gallons of water per day. You save more water by not eating a pound of beef than you do by not showering for an entire year.
Gadzooks! Even if those numbers are skewed some, getting meat uses a heck of a lot of water.
Alright, enough with the eco-footprint lesson. Moving on to the…
Black Bean Burger Recipe
This simple veggie burger recipe (which makes 4 servings) calls for…
- 2 peppers (jalapeño, cayenne, or banana)
- About 8 teaspoons of olive oil
- 2 garlic cloves
- 2 shallots
- 2 cups of cooked, drained black beans (a 29oz. can is a just about right)
- 2/3 cup quick-cooking oats
- 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
- 1/2 teaspoon oregano
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 teaspoon pepper
