Hi there blog readers! Last night I spent a good part of my free time in the kitchen making homemade vegetable and bean burgers for dinner. My friends and I have been discussing the side effects of eating processed soy and the possible negative effects of your health by eating those so easy to prep “veggie” burgers that are filled with processed soy.

Instead of eating a processed veggie burger for dinner last night, I decided to make my own. It involves some time, ingredients, shredding, chopping and food processing! But it is all a lot of fun and the end result is delicious and so fresh. Totally worth the extra time and effort!

Here is the recipe I came up with last night on the fly:

1 cup of roughly chopped onion

4 cloves of garlic, mashed and minced.

1/3 C of rolled oats

2 cans of beans, rinsed and some bean liquid reserved (I used a can of low sodium cannelloni beans and low sodium black beans)

1/3 C of chopped cilantro

Chili powder, freshly ground pepper, a small pinch of salt, a couple of dashes of hot sauce

3 shredded carrots

I chopped the onion and sautéed the onion in a little bit of olive oil. You do not have to cook the onion – but the BF has a hard time consuming raw onion, so I cook them whenever I can before putting them into a recipe.

The carrots looked pretty:

Soon enough the rest of the ingredients were in the food processor along with the chopped onions (which steamed things up just a bit!):

I started pulsing the mixture together to see how it was going to come together. I added some reserved bean liquid and a little water (by the tablespoon) and then took some of the mixture in my hand to see how if it would form a patty. Accidentally I made it a little too wet, so I added just a little more rolled oats.

I took out some parchment paper on to the counter and started forming the patties. They were coming together nicely!

I loved the consistency of these burgers. I did not want all of the ingredients to be completely blended, and I loved that we could still see beans in the mixture. When I made the patties, I put them on a large plate, placed a piece of plastic wrap over them and put the burgers into the fridge to firm up a little bit.

A half hour later I turned on our stove and put a little olive oil in a non stick pan. Once the oil was hot, I added the first burger. I cooked each side for several minutes. The burgers really browned up nicely!! I was so happy with the result:

The final product looked just like a hamburger! I had all the fixings to make the burger official. Whole wheat sandwich thins, arugula, red onions, tomato slices, hummus and spicy mustard. I could have eaten two burgers for sure!

(But I’m glad I didn’t.) These burgers received rave reviews. I definitely recommend that you take the time to make these from scratch! This recipe made about nine burgers. We put six in the freezer and I made one for lunch.

Happy eating everyone – stay tuned, I’ll be back soon with more non processed foods that you should definitely make at home! 🙂