Dinner today was not exactly what you’d call gourmet, but it sure was delicious. This was the second round of myself and R’s attempts to make delicious beanburgers. The first time we tried it, we used dried black beans. While we’d left them soaking overnight, they still needed to be boiled for ages before they stopped being crunchy. Even with that, the burgers ended up kind-of dry and a little bland. While this is an easy problem to fix with enormous dollops of sauce, it still wasn’t ideal. Also, having to soak beans overnight and then boil them for over a half-hour isn’t exactly convenient.

Today’s beanburgers worked out way better. We used tinned beans and were far, far more generous with flavourings, and they ended up yum. Even if I made mine a bit taller than my mouth is big. But still, who ever said that burgers were supposed to be a delicate, sophisticated food?

Very Nice Indeed Beanburgers

As usual, we’re going with the Dollop Scale here. You’ll need:

• A slice or so of breadcrumbs.
• An egg
• As much chopped onion and garlic as you like.
• A tin or two of beans, depending on how many burgers you’re making. We used two tins of kidney beans, which made two massive double-burgers with plenty to spare for tomorrow. We also chucked in a bit of leftover refried beans which we had lying about in the fridge.
• Seasonings! We used a very generous dollop of marmite, a good bit of vegan worcestershire sauce, a few shakes of paprika, some pepper, and a fearfully cautious dolloplet of Extremely Hot Sauce.

Mix all the ingredients together in a bowl. Smoosh and mash them up until they’re a nicely squishy consistency- I mashed them with a potato masher, but I’m aware that not everyone in the world knows what one of those is. Shape them into burgers, and then grill ’em, fry ’em, barbecue ’em, or do whatever it is that you do to make your burgermix into burgers. Enjoy!