Sam Zwick

I enjoy eating meat.

I’m not a chest-pounding, vegan-shaming, foaming-at-the-mouth carnivore, I just like a good steak. Or a grilled chicken thigh covered in barbecue sauce. Or a meatball. Literally a ball of meat and it’s delicious.

While I’m not picky when it comes to meat-centric meals, there is one food that sits above the rest; the burger.

Give me a well seasoned patty topped with melted cheese, crisp vegetables, and a medley of sauces all nestled between two pillowy buns and I’m putty in your hands. As far as foods go, the burger has one of the best PR teams around. If the hotdog is famous, the burger is legendary.

Perhaps variety is the key to the burger’s sustained success. Evolution, after all, staves off extinction. The classic hamburger is still a staple, but now there’s cheese, bacon, sautéed veggies, avocados, jams, chutneys and even peanut butter taking turns on top of your favorite patty.

And that’s just the fixings.

While beef is the king-maker in the burger world, bison, turkey, pork, chicken and even seafood have carved out their own niches at the center of this special sandwich.

All of this is to say, it’s hard to hate a burger. So what then, is one to do with the black bean burger?

Before plant-based hit the mainstream, the black bean burger stood alone in the corner, holding the weight of the meatless category on its back. Now, though, I dare you to find a black bean burger on a menu. A decade ago, the dethroning of the black bean as the vegetarian option seemed all but impossible, but here we stand, Impossible patties galore, black beans barley present.

I’m here to tell you that the black bean burger doesn’t deserve such a fate. In fact, we’ve wronged the black bean burger by putting it in the burger category at all. Allow me to explain.

The first time I had a black bean burger was shortly after graduating college. My roommate had purchased a box of frozen black bean burgers that quickly became the resting spot for our ice trays. (The flat surface was simply more valuable than the burgers within.) Fast forward to the week before our lease was set to end. My roommate moved across the country and surprisingly, hadn’t made room in the U-Haul for his long-neglected veggie patties.

In an effort to both clean out the freezer and not spend any money, I opened the box. The directions were simple; warm it up via any means available. You could bake it, put it in a pan on the stove, microwave it, heck, even a toaster oven would get the job done. From there, I did what any burger-lover would do and found a bun. Topped with cheese, ketchup and a bit of lettuce, my black bean burger was humble by all accounts.

I took my first bite and it was…fine. Honestly, the patty barley stood out from the bun it sat on. Both were good in their own right, but combine them and the effect was a starchy sponge that called for more lubrication.

The next day I topped one with pickles and the day after that, some sautéed mushrooms. (I had an entire pack to eat after all.) The results were better, but there was still something off about the experience.

Months later, I stumbled across a recipe for black bean burgers online. Perhaps a homemade version would scratch the itch left behind by my frozen foray. I made a shopping list and returned from the store armed with everything I needed to make the burgers. However, I failed to secure the buns and ketchup that I had written on the back of my sad little sticky note.

Improvisation was in order and as is so often the story, one small misstep lead to a massive breakthrough.

I ate my black bean patty on a spinach tortilla with sautéed mushrooms, onions, spinach and fresh sliced tomato. Without the familiar cushion of ketchup to fall back on, I tossed together a chili aioli. (If we want to talk about great PR teams, hats off to mayonnaise for classing itself up as aioli.)

The results were delicious.

The next day, I ditched the tortilla and veggies and placed a single fried egg on top of one along with a dash of hot sauce. Breakfast was transformed and the humble black bean was responsible.

Folks, the problem with the black bean burger isn’t that it’s not tasty or exciting. The problem is that it’s mislabeled. It’s a black bean patty.

We turn all manner of foods into patties without forcing them into the center of a burger. The sausage patty is a breakfast staple, but not something you want served up with mustard at a cookout. The crab cake is a patty and it stands proudly naked on the plate, no bun needed.

The same respect should befall the black bean patty. Serve it as I do following the recipe below or venture out on your own and discover a new combination. Just because it shouldn’t be a in burger, doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be enjoyed.

So here’s to the black bean burger, the best burger that simply isn’t one.

Black Bean Burger Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 8 oz. cans of black beans
• 1/2 medium yellow or white onion
• 1/4 green pepper
• 1/4 red pepper
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
• 2 tsp chili powder
• 2 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 400° F.
• Drain and rinse black beans and place them in a large bowl.
• Grate 1/4 of the onion onto the beans. Grate size does not matter.
• Add in Worcestershire sauce, crushed garlic, egg and seasoning. (Feel free to add in any other spices you’d like. If you’re looking to add some heat, hot sauce works here, too.)
• Using a potato masher or a sturdy fork, mash your bean mixture. No need to fully pulverize everything, some texture is preferred.
• Finely dice your remaining 1/4 onion and red and green peppers. (Toss in a jalapeño or any other pepper if you’re feeling spicy.)
• Mix peppers and onions into bean mixture with a spoon until evenly dispersed.
• Refrigerate bean mixture for an hour or up to a day. (This step is not required, but it makes everything less sticky when it comes to forming your patties.)
• On a greased pan, form 6 to 8 patties, depending on size preference. I like mine about half an inch thick and slightly elongated to better fill up a tortilla.
• Bake at 400° F for 25 minutes, flipping halfway. (If you’d like a slightly less crispy-on-the-edges patty, cook until internal temperature reaches 160° F.)
• Enjoy however you’d like, or as I do with sautéed veggies and your preferred sauce on a tortilla. (Pairs great with some sweet potato fries.)