Meal Stretcher Monday: Veggie Burgers

If you have been reading here so far, it's not a surprise that I'm a vegetarian. When it comes to burgers-and-fries night on our meal schedule, that leaves me with store-bought veggie burgers. These packages are usually between $3 and $4 for four patties.

Really? A buck or so EACH? I bet I can do better.





I searched around and found quite a few recipes - most with ingredients I don't have in the house. The closest recipe to what I had on hand was this one from Runner's World. I had to make a few changes, but let's run with it.

(See what I did there? Run with it?)

Ingredients: (makes 8 patties - a double batch!)
3 cups of black beans (or two cans. I make mine from dried beans then freeze.)
1 cup cooked millet (the original calls for quinoa, but that stuff's pricey)
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon salt (the original calls for sea salt, but let's not get fancy, shall we?)
2 tablespoons grated cheese (the original calls for nutritional yeast, but I've never owned that before)
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Mix all of the ingredients in a large bowl, then have at them with a potato masher! This is oddly therapeutic!


Just keep mashing until they make a paste.


Mold them by hand into 8 patties. (At this point you might have to take a few minutes and fight off small children who believe that you are making big chocolate chip cookies. Stay strong, and pour yourself a glass of wine.)


Cook the patties on medium-high heat in a dry pan (the original calls for frying them with some oil, but I'm trying to keep this as healthy as possible. It only takes about a minute or two on each side, and you're good to go.


A quick note: These came out pretty crumbly for me after I cooked them. I think it's because I used beans that I had bought dried instead of canned. In the future I'll add an egg (or egg replacer) to the batch. Still delicious, though.

Serve just as you would a burger!