Posts tagged as:

beans

Bean Burgers

by Linda on January 17, 2012

This is the second in the Tuesday Night Vego Challenge, and already I’m cheating a little bit. Making this easily within the half hour relies on you having fresh or already cooked beans and bread rolls on hand. I’m starting to harvest beans for shelling now.  By the end of the summer I’ll have a big  jar full of each kind for slow cooking over the winter.

But fresh picked beans cook much much faster than older, drier ones. I used a cup of shelled, dried but fresh, Purple Kings for these – they’re the larger pinker ones in the picture – soaked for the day while I was at work (soaking removes the oligosaccharide in the skin that give beans their reputation for  fart-producing), drained,  then pressure cooked in a cup of fresh water. They took just 15  minutes to cook to very soft, but if you have older, drier beans they could take anything up to 45 minutes. Slow cookers are another good way to cook beans.   Bean Basics gives you the basics of cooking beans. You want them a little bit overcooked for this recipe.

Once you have cooked beans, the rest of the recipe comes together very fast and easy. Beans are fantastically good for you, full of protein, complex carbohydrates, fibre (both soluble and insoluble) and a whole range of vitamins and minerals.  A bean burger with no cholesterol and a heap of soluble fibre is double heart tick material.

And burgers are a great meal for hot weather.  A nice way to serve them is to set the table with all the makings – bread rolls, sliced tomato and cucumber, lettuce and rocket, fried onions, sauces and pickles, and let everyone assemble their own.

The Recipe:

Makes 4 huge patties or 6 normal sized ones. Leftovers are great for lunches.

Start with 1 cup of dried beans in the morning, soaked for the day then boiled or pressure cooked in fresh water with a good pinch of salt (beans need salt) until very soft.

Or, start with two cups of cooked beans.

Blend, puree, or mash half the beans and mix with 1 large or 2 small eggs and 2 dessertspoons of Worcestershire sauce. (I do this in my food processor.)

Mix in:

  • the other half of the soft, cooked whole beans
  • 1 mild onion, finely diced
  • 2-3 cloves of garlic crushed or diced
  • 1 chili, hot or mild depending on you taste for spicy food, finely diced.
  • 2 dessertspoons of wholemeal flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder

I use my hands to squish it all together, semi breaking up the whole beans but leaving some texture to them.

Wash your hands, and using wet hands shape the bean mix into patties.

Get a pan with some olive oil in it hot, then put the patties in and fry gently till golden.

While the patties are cooking, you can toast your burger buns if you like them toasted, and maybe melt a little cheese onto the top half. Fry some onions.  Slice some tomatoes, cucumber, and salad greens. Some home pickled beetroot goes well. Serve with any combination you like of pickles, sauces, mayonnaise, or chutney.

Do you have a  Tuesday Night Vego Challenge idea or recipe to add?

You Might Also Like:

{ 7 comments }

Picking Up Something for Dinner

by Linda on May 23, 2011

Out in the garden this  morning in the rain, little grizzle about picking in the cold and wet, until I remembered – no visit to the supermarket after work, no trying to find parking close enough to avoid getting drenched, no queues of tired and grumpy people. Just this lovely quiet of a misty morning with trees all sparkling with raindrops and happy frogs calling.

We have the slow combustion wood stove going at night these days, heating the house and making hot water as well as cooking.  It also keeps the sourdough bread warm enough to prove beautifully. I put a lamb shank in the pressure cooker for stock last night, adding a cupful of the Purple King bean seeds I saved in summer just before bed.  They have slow slow cooked overnight and this morning there is a gorgeous base of soft beans in meaty stock.  This morning I stoked up the fire and added another log, then went for a pick in the garden.

A leek, a parsnip, a carrot, a pumpkin, some celery, some amaranth, some silver beet, a handful of  cherry tomatoes, a handful of green beans, a few leaves of sorrel, a few leaves of chinese cabbage, a couple of late chilis.

Bring the lot up to pressure then take it off the heat, shut down the fire so it keeps going very low all day, and off to work.

When I get home tonight, there will be live coals in the stove and the house will be warm and dry.  There will be a loaf of sourdough on the kitchen counter, ready to just pop into the warm oven and a pot of bean and vegetable soup ready to just warm up, enough for dinner for the two of us tonight and leftovers for lunch tomorrow as well. I’ll stoke up the fire and feel warm and nurtured and very grateful for my garden!

You Might Also Like:

{ 2 comments }

The Breakfast Challenge – Frijoles Con Queso (Cheesy Beans)

by Linda on February 25, 2011

The picture doesn’t really do justice to the hearty, spicy, creamy goodness of this.  It is one of my favourite breakfasts, and so fast and easy I often make it just for me.  So this is a one person recipe, and the kind of  high protein, high fibre, low GI, low fat, low calorie breakfast that people like me with low activity need to find tempting! It’s easily adapted though for more people or more active people, and it also makes a good Sunday night dinner when you are hungry but don’t feel like cooking or eating anything too elaborate.

(The Breakfast Challenge??)

The Recipe:

Serves one – double or treble for more.

This recipe, like just about all bean recipes, starts with “soak your beans”.  Bean Basics tells you why and how.  I use my home-grown Purple King seeds, but you can use kidney, pinto or black turtle beans.  Fresh beans will cook faster than old beans, so if you are buying beans, look for Australian grown ones with the latest “best before” date.

I start with ¹/3 cup of dried bean seeds, soaked overnight in cold water.  In the morning, I put the beans on to cook in the pressure cooker with 1½ cups of water and pressure cook for 10 minutes until they are very soft. (Larger, older beans will take longer).

While the beans are cooking, I sauté together one onion, finely diced, a couple of cloves of garlic, and half a chili in a little olive oil.  If you don’t like it spicy hot, you can substitute some diced capsicum or a good pinch of cumin for the chili, or just leave it out.

As soon as the beans are cooked, tip them, water and all, into the pan with the onions.  There should be just about the right amount of liquid to get all the tastiness out of the pan. Boil to reduce if necessary. You want something that will blend to dip consistency. Add two good dessertspoons of low fat cottage cheese and a pinch of salt.

Blend this mixture, using a blender, food processor, or stick blender, until it is smooth and creamy.  Add salt to taste – beans need a bit of salt – and serve with flatbread and a spoon.

You Might Also Like:

{ 3 comments }

Bean Basics

February 23, 2011

We’re eating green beans just about every day at the moment – in salads and stews and sautés and steamed vegetables - and and I’m still harvesting about this many beans for drying every few days.  Beans are one of my real staples – super easy to grow, prolific, a good source of protein, soluble fiber, [...]

Read the full article →

Asian Style Bean and Capsicum Salad

February 8, 2011

After floods followed by heat wave, my garden has practically no leafy greens in it.  The parsley and celery keeled over in the wet – they hate waterlogged roots and although my drainage is pretty good, it wasn’t up to 150mm of rain in a day.  The lettuces and rocket keeled over in the heat [...]

Read the full article →

Slow Cooked Green Beans Italian Style

December 18, 2010

Beans are like octopus – they need to be cooked either very fast or very slow. I love snake beans cooked in an Asian way – just barely blanched, so they are still crunchy and tossed in a dressing.  But these purple king beans have such a nice deep flavour, I think they go better [...]

Read the full article →

Nina’s Minestrone

July 5, 2010

This time of year, part of the evening ritual is chopping some firewood and lighting the slow combustion stove.  I’m not a huge fan of winter but I do like the stove. It’s a lovely old Rayburn we bought second hand about 20 years ago, probably half a century or more old. It warms the house, [...]

Read the full article →

Moroccan Style Kangaroo Tagine with White Beans and Preserved Lemon

May 20, 2010

If you are new to kangaroo meat, this is not a bad recipe to start out with.  The preserved lemon is the interesting flavour in it, and kangaroo is a great meat for a tagine because it is so lean and dense. And I also believe kangaroo is the most ethical choice for Australians. Kangaroos [...]

Read the full article →

Ginger, Mint and Culantro Besan Pancakes

April 11, 2010

This all started with an item in the Sunday papers about how women really should do weights training. I looked at the weights, but that idea lasted all of about two seconds. But then I spotted the tray of beans drying ready for storage. The trusty old hand grinder and five minutes grinding beans and [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries