So, here is my first foray into vegan cooking…not baking, cooking. Now this doesn’t mean I haven’t ever baked without the normal products (meat, cheese, eggs), but it does mean I have never made a burger before.

I miss burgers. They were a staple in my house growing up, well anything hamburger related was, and I really do miss them. Gardenburger, Morningstar Farms and Boca just don’t cut it sometimes. They are too thin and kinda plain-don’t get me wrong I love those brands, but sometimes I just wanna bite into a big juicy, fall-apart burger.

I made it. Myself. I had never had a vegan or vegetarian black bean burger until very recently. My sister-in-law and I went to a vegan restaurant in San Antonio, Vegeria, and we had theirs and oh, my we were both agog for it-they even made their own biscuit bun! Then my mom and I went to TGI Fridays and I got one and loved it. So I went online and found the following recipe on my Whole Foods app on my iPhone.

I am going to give you their recipe but then I will give you what I really did.

Whole Foods Southwest Veggie Burger, 4 burgers

1 C cooked brown rice

1 C cooked no-salt-added  black beans, rinsed and mashed

¼ C diced tomato

¼ C diced roasted red bell peppers

¼ C shredded carrots

3 green onions, finely chopped

1 C cooked and mashed sweet potato

¼ C cilantro

1 tbsp no-salt-added chili powder

1 tsp ground cumin

3 tbsp nutritional yeast

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp Tabasco or other hot sauce

So my take on the Southwest Veggie Burger is below…and mainly I did it this way because I didn’t have some of the ingredients (like the binding brown rice!). I also love baked sweet potatoes, or any sweet potato with cinnamon on it, so I made a large batch to take as my fries for my lunches. This batch made me six large burgers and eight servings of fries at about 1 cup per my serving.

Megan’s Southwest Vegan Burger with Baked Sweet Potato Fries, 6 servings

1 C sweet potato, boiled and mashed

2 C black beans, no-salt-added and fork mashed

½ C Roma tomato, chopped finely

½ C red bell pepper, raw and chopped finely

6 green onions, chopped finely

2 tbsp chili powder

2 tbsp cumin

2 tbsp pepper

1 tsp dried red pepper

2 tbsp garlic, minced

4 ½ sweet potatoes- large

5 tbsp cinnamon

3 tbsp olive oil, more if needed

Set the oven at 385° and spray Pam over two non-stick cookie sheets.

1. Wash then slice, carefully, the sweet potatoes into small and thinly sliced squares. This is the best way for me to describe how I cut my “fries”. I find sweet potatoes to be unwieldy and do not like to be cut into thin strips so I like thin squares.
2. Toss all squares into a large bowl and pour the olive oil over them then get your hands in and mix them all up with the oil. Be sure to add more oil if needed, but you do not want them dripping with oil just lightly coated.
3. Pour the coated squares onto the cookie sheets. Spread them out evenly then wash your hands off or you will get oil all over your cinnamon jar. Sprinkle, or pour as I do, the cinnamon over them. Mix them up a little with your hands then lightly coat the other side.
4. Bake for 45 minutes then yum.

While the fries are baking:

1. Chop the sweet potato into small squares and cover with water in a pan and boil until tender.
2. Open up and rinse the canned black beans and pour into a large bowl. Mash with a fork most of the beans. I used the beans as the binder, but I still wanted to see some of the beans in my burgers.
3. Chop finely the tomato, pepper and green onion and toss in with the beans.
4. Drain the sweet potatoes when fork tender and then mash with the fork before dropping into the bowl.
5. Drop all the seasonings and garlic into the bowl.
6. Mix all the ingredients together by hand (be sure the potatoes have cooled off). Luckily you can taste the mixture to see how it tastes, unlike a burger, and add in more seasonings to taste how you want it.

After the fries are done pull them out and put them all on one cookie sheet. Wash off the remaining sheet, again make sure it has cooled off, dry the pan then spray with Pam.

Shape the burgers into 6 not-thin rounds. I say not-thin because mine fell apart L Very sad face for me. Bake the burgers for about 30 minutes and flip (carefully) half way through, probably a little longer.

Yum when you eat.

So what I would do different is try with the rice next time. I liked the burger just fine, and did like not having the extra carbs and calories, but since mine didn’t stick together to well, I would like to see the difference. Also, I want to try different spices.

I can’t wait to do this one again. What is your favorite vegan burger recipe?

Calorie Count for the Burger:

Calories              104 Total Fat           .3 g Cholesterol      0 mg Sodium              16 mg Total Carbs      20 g Protein               56 g