Black bean burgers! (with mango avocado salsa)

Sometimes, Russo's (the place I go to get veggies) has sales on cases of mangos. $6 for 10 mangos, it is always too good a deal to pass up, since I love mangos, but what does one do with 10 mangos?? Well, mango-avocado salsa is a good place to start. This stuff is so good I could just eat it with a fork, but sometimes you need something else to go with your mango salsa, so I made some bean burgers. I'd made some of these before, and they weren't nearly firm enough, so this time I added an egg to hold them together and some rice to dry them out (I would have used breadcrumbs if I'd had any of those lying around, but the rice worked well). They were good! The test will be if Ed likes them...

Ingredients
3.5C cooked black beans (~1.5C dry)
1C cooked rice (1/2C dry)
1/2 onion
1/4 red pepper
1/2C parsley
1/4C cilantro
1 egg
1/3C flour
1 tbs bacon grease or butter
4 cloves garlic
2 jalapenos
Dash of hot sauce
1.5 tbs salt
Other seasonings: coriander, cumin, pepper, cayenne, whatever you think would taste good.
There are a lot of ingredients here. The only thing that is super important is the egg, bacon grease, flour, beans, and rice. Everything else is for taste.

To cook the beans:
Count on about 2-2.5 hours for this. You can either soak the beans for 8 hours, or you can do the “quick soak” method: Stick your beans in a pot of water, bring it to a boil, then turn it off and let it sit for an hour. This is not an ideal method of soaking if you wanted whole beans, because it loosens the skins, but that doesn’t matter when you’re mashing up the beans for burgers. After an hour, drain the beans, put more water in the pot and two bay leaves, and simmer the beans for another hour or so, until they’re super tender.

To make the patties:
As your beans are cooking, add about a tablespoon of bacon grease (better flavor) or butter to a frying pan. Add your four cloves of minced garlic and your half a diced onion. Sweat the onion, then add 1/3C of flour, and cook it briefly, until it has soaked up all the remaining grease. If you don’t cook the flour, your bean burgers will taste like raw flour. Alternatively, skip this step and use breadcrumbs, but I didn’t have any breadcrumbs.

In a large bowl, mash your cooked beans with a potato masher, or you can use a food processor. I found I had to add about 2 tablespoons of water when I used the food processor. Add everything else and stir it around until it is a homogenous glop. The rice will help hold it together. Form the patties. Ideally, you’ll let these sit in the fridge for an hour or two to let the flavors meld, but really, who has that sort of time or patience??


The raw patties...

Heat a cast iron frying pan or a skillet, and grease it lightly. Again, bacon grease would be best, but sometimes its just easier to use butter. Get it pretty warm, medium-high, and once the butter is sizzling and threatening to burn, throw on a couple bean burgers. Turn the heat down to medium at this point, finish browning the first side, and flip them to do the other one. They want to be fully cooked, because its not such a great idea to eat raw eggs, and they’ll hold together better when they’re cooked.

Cool them on a rack, adding some salt if you think they aren’t salty enough, and then enjoy them as you would a hamburger, or plain, or with mango salsa.

Mango Salsa
2 Mangoes
1 avocado
1 red onion
1 clove garlic
1C chopped cilantro
1 jalapeno (this makes it a mild salsa. Add another pepper or two for more kick)
1/2 lime, juiced
~1 tbs salt

Dice everything, put it in a bowl, mix it together.

Burger Buns
This is pretty much the same recipe as the sticky bun dough. So, you could make half a batch of buns, and half a batch of sticky buns, if you wished.

2 eggs
Hot water to make 2C
2 tbs sugar
1 tbs (1 packet) yeast
2 tbs butter, softened
2C whole wheat flour
1 tbs salt
3-3.5C white flour
Sesame seeds (optional)

Crack two eggs into a two cup measure, and fill the remainder with warm water. Mix this thoroughly, then put it in a big mixing bowl. Add the sugar, beat well. Add the yeast, stir, and let it sit for about 10 minutes until it is frothy.

Add 2 tablespoons of melted butter, then the whole wheat flour and the salt, and start adding and mixing the white flour until the dough starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl. Dump it out on a floured board/table, and knead until it is slightly tacky but smooth and shiny and does not stick to your hands (about 10 minutes). Clean your bowl, grease it, and return the dough to the bowl. Let it sit at room temperature covered with a damp cloth about 1 hour, or until it doubles in size.

Separate the dough into about sixteen pieces, and roll them into balls. Then flatten them as flat as you possibly can. They’ll look way too flat, but they’ll rise a lot in the oven, so you want them looking like mini pizzas. Sprinkle the tops with sesame seeds, and lightly press the sesame seeds into the dough so they don’t fall off.

Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper and put your flat balls of dough on it. Place this in a 400 degree oven for 5 minutes, then turn down the heat to 350 and finish baking until they look done. Cool and slice in half to make buns.