A Tale of Two Bean Burgers

Tuesday:

Breakfast - Whole wheat bagel with cream cheese

Lunch - Left over southwest black bean burger

Dinner - Home made bean burger (Get recipe here)

Beans in a can and dry beans in a bag are two very different creatures.

Last night we decided that bean burgers would be dinner tonight. Nate had a late day so he said he'd prep things in the morning and then I could warm them up and add my fixin's come dinner time. Well, I read the back of the bag of beans and made sure we got them soaking in the evening and told Nate it might take 2 hours to cook the beans in the morning.

It did take him 2 hours to cook the beans. And what he ended up with was WAY more cooked beans than either of us anticipated. We're smart people. How did we manage not to realize that when you add water to something dry that it expands? *sigh* Sometimes I'm just not thinking. Nate did get the burgers made up and left them for L and I to eat when we got home that evening. More on them later.

I was going to have peanut butter on my bagel again today, but I didn't dress my bagel. I popped it in the toaster and then went to do something else for a minute and when I got back Nate was smearing it with cream cheese for me. How sweet! I didn't have the heart to mention I was going to do peanut butter because he thought to do it for me - I'm not knocking that. (Of course, now he'll read this and know the truth. - Love you sweetie!)

The black bean burger from Saturday's trip to Iron Hill was oddly easier to eat the second time. Of course, I reheated it whole - bun and all - and then ate it with a fork and knife. Given how it fell apart as I tried to eat it on Saturday, I figured that was my best bet, and it turned out to be true. It still had great flavor though. That pepperjack cheese and the vegetables really made it.

Come dinner time L had no interest in a bean burger and declared that he wanted pasta. I wanted him to try the burger, but figured he wouldn't like it so I went ahead and cooked elbow noodles and sauce for him. Meanwhile I pulled out a bean burger for myself and the grill pan to heat it up. I took one look at it and knew that this was going to be a dry burger. I toasted my whole wheat kaiser roll, rinsed some lettuce and cut some tomato. I put a layer of mayo on the one side of the bun. I put some swiss cheese on the burger as it warmed (note - swiss cheese does not melt quickly). I went looking for some salsa.

No salsa.

It turns out that no salsa (and too many beans) was the ultimate problem with the burgers. With so many beans Nate used more than he'd intended. And we had less salsa than we thought - so it didn't even go as far as it was supposed to with a normal amount of beans. Most of the other flavors in the burgers didn't come through either. It needed some veggies to round it out. Not as many as the southwest burger - the homemade burger held up really well and didn't fall apart on me as I tried to eat it; a big plus.

In the final estimation I think this recipe still has potential. I think we'll buy some salsa to put on the remaining burgers. And next time we'll cook up beans before we weigh them out for the recipe.

If we keep up days like this, on our next grocery trip we need to pick up some Beano.