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

Chop up the peppers (I used homegrown cayennes and banana peppers), shallots, and garlic. Use scissors for that extra manly touch.

Sauté the chopped-up peppers, garlic, and shallots in olive oil for about 5 minutes.

Put the fried vittles in a bowl, along with the black beans, mayonnaise, oregano, and salt n’ pepa.

Heck, while you’re at it, add the oats, as well.

Mash all the ingredients together with all your might. Take out your inner rage on that mashing. Make those ingredients pay.

Refrigerate the ingredients for about half an hour. Take this time to reflect on your day.

Alright, now form patties with this bean glop. Put some olive oil in a pan and gently place those veggie burger patties in said pan.

Fry them for about 5 minutes on each side. They should look a little something like this:

Congratulations, you’ve just made homemade black bean burgers! Put the veggie burger on a bun and move it toward your mouth.

Final Thoughts

The black bean burger was good, but didn’t taste anything close to a hamburger. It’s not bad, it just doesn’t have that special cow flavor.

If you have a better recipe for veggie burgers, feel free as a bird to let me know and I’ll try it out.