A bunch of friends and I just spent the weekend at Tea's family's beach house. Technically, the season is over, but we had a birthday that needed celebrating, and we got incredibly lucky with the weather on Sunday (sunny and warm when it was supposed to be cold and rainy). Being me, and liking to feed people (and looking forward to any opportunity to play with fire) I made a bunch of different types of burgers we could grill. Some of them came out better than others (the crab burgers, for example. Though tasty, they fell to pieces when you looked at them. Luckily, I cooked them in a pan).

The one that blew everyone's mind, though, were the veggie burgers. I admit, I stole this recipe from someplace else, and then altered it just a little bit. I couldn't help it, the original were so bland, all the flavor was in the specialty condiments. I'm not a fan of specialty condiments. I don't like to be fussy with my food, and nothing seems more nitpicky than "this sauce goes with this, and that little jar is only for that dish." Build a meal that uses the same flavor palate, so I can just grate Parmesan cheese over everything, or ask for the ketchup once and squirt it both on my sandwich and a corner of my plate for dipping fries, or what have you. Long story short: I moved the spices from the condiments to the burgers. They are made thusly:

Drain and rinse a can of black beans and a can of kidney beans (15 oz cans of each). Add 1/3 cup of corn (canned, frozen, fresh, whatever), 1/3 cup of breadcrumbs, 1/3 to one half a small onion (the recipe says 1/4 cup. I might use more), 1 large egg, 1/2 teaspoon chile powder, and 1/2 teaspoon cumin. A couple or four generous twists of black pepper (or shakes, but I have a pepper grinder thing, so this is how I measure pepper), and just a tiny pinch of salt. Now, mash with a fork.

I suppose you could mash it in the food processor, but what I've discovered is that you want something coarser than that gives me. So I use a fork, and my aim is to at least puncture every bean in the bowl. You don't want to smash them to oblivion, because then it's too moist. but if you have two whole beans next to each other, they fall off the burger patty. So every skin broken, but not mashed to death is my goal.

Edit 1/24/2010: I used a potato masher tonight, and that gave me the same final texture as a fork with less than half the effort.

Form them into patties (hands work well. It is messy though), wrap in tinfoil, and freeze until ready to cook and eat. I like them with cheese, mustard, and pickles, but you can put whatever you wish on them. In any case, they are crazy tasty. They don't pretend to be meat, which makes me happy, and they don't taste like you're sacrificing anything for lack of a beef burger.