It has been far too long since I posted about our cooking extravaganzas. Busyness is not really an excuse, although it will have to suffice.
These burgers look great in the picture. I was under the impression they were made out of some kind of meat (turkey or beef) mixed with beans. Not so. The burgers are made entirely of bean. Holy frejoles. Almost like a bean “meatball”, they have breadcrumbs, cheese, and cilantro as well. Breadcrumbs give them a little extra substance, while cheese adds texture and goo. The cilantro, however, was eliminated. Christine does not like cilantro. Quite frankly, I think there must be some deep, dark, secret story concerning this herb we have yet to hear…either way, she wouldn’t even consider putting it in. And the recipe calls for a pretty hefty amount! We replaced it with fresh spinach and basil. Delicious alternatives, I have to tell you.
I convinced Christine to shred the cheese in the food processor. It called for over a cup, and that’s a lot to grate by hand, even for the Superhuman C. We agreed that our aversion to the food processor in general stems from years ago, when we used to have pancakes on Wednesday mornings. To make pancakes for a family of seven who eats at seven in the morning, one needs to start preparations early. Also, being the health nuts we are, we didn’t just dump some Bisquick in a bowl and stir in some milk. Oh no. We had this intense blender pancake recipe that used whole grains like millet and kamut. The loud, raucous sound of hard grains being blended into smooth submission was always slightly scary at 6:32 in the morning. You understand. Anyway, Christine acquiesced to my plea to use the loud and tedious food processor. Speed was definitely the order of the day.
I don’t really know why that was the case, though, since we were completely done preparing the burgers at 4:00. Since they only cook 20 minutes, we had lots of time to wait. We mixed up the amazing mango salsa to go on top: fresh mango, avocado, fresh lime juice, and fresh mint from our garden. <yum>
The other element of the meal was fries, and we <whisper> bought those. So we set the table, chopped up some carrots and celery, and generally hung around until it was time to cook the burgers. Speaking of which, we also removed the cumin. My mother can’t stand cumin. It probably gives her stomach problems, too. She has a very delicate digestive balance. The finely chopped jalapeno pepper was also replaced with a few dashes of red pepper. We’re not a Mexican family – what else can I say?
The burgers were supposed to cook 10 minutes before being “gently turned” and cooked another 10. HA. The things are complete mush after 10 minutes, and it takes a quick, strong hand and a confident flip to turn them over. The dinner pretty much hung in the balance during those three minutes. But all the burgers did eventually get turned over, and stuck back in the oven.
They sat on the stove, cooling off a little, before being served. This allowed the cheese to congeal and everything to come together very nicely, so that they were more like burgers, instead of blobs. Nice.
And then we ate! I thought they were fantastic! You barely miss the red meat – everything tasted great. The mango salsa positively made it, although I do think it would have helped if both mangoes we used had been ripe. :-S Oh well. Can’t win them all.
On a scale from 1 to 10: 8.
The only thing I would change would be to have completely ripe mangoes. We also used our Buttermilk Ranch dressing on the burgers, since ketchup and mustard were hardly applicable. That was very tasty. The mint in the salsa, although not a part of the original recipe, was an extra plus. Definitely a make-again.
