black bean and rice burgers

Today is my wonderful sister's birthday and so I set out to make her a birthday dinner.  Lately she has been on this vegetarian kick and so I decided to make her homemade veggie burgers...except these are different than the kind you buy frozen, these are made primarily with beans and rice.  They are super simple to make and they taste great, a million times better than those gross frozen discs you buy in the freezer section of the grocery store.  All you need for them are:

1 1/2 cups black beans
1 cup cooked brown rice (I used long grain)
2 cups bread crumbs (I used panko because they are crunchier, but you can certainly use any kind!  I would stay away from the seasoned ones though because they normally have additives in them - and you can certainly make your own by putting stale bread in the food processor)
1 white onion
1 red bell pepper
4-5 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp cumin

The first thing you want to do is follow the directions for the rice you are using and begin to boil the water.  While the water is boiling you can definitely multi-task and get the onion and garlic down in your pan with a little olive oil.  Whenever working with onions and veggies make sure you always start the onion before the other veggies because they take longer to cook.  Throw in a pinch of salt to start pulling the moisture and allow them to "sweat".

Once the onions and garlic are a translucent color you can add the red pepper...make sure you are stirring occasionally to keep everything from sticking, but don't stir too often or they won't get a nice browning.  After  the pepper is soft add the tumeric and cumin.

While the onion/pepper mixture is cooking you can start mashing the black beans.  You can do this by hand but it is much easier to throw them into the food processor and pulse until they are mashed with a few chunks still there (you don't want to puree it or anything!) It should look like this...

Once the beans are mashed add the onion/pepper mixture (which should be cool, you don't want to put it in there scalding hot or it will start to cook the beans...and not to mention burn your hands!)  Your rice should be cooked by now as well.  I threw my rice in the food processor and pulsed a few times just to break it down a little...but you still want it to be slightly chunky.  Also, add your breadcrumbs at this time.  Start to incorporate it all together with a spoon...

Now is when you get dirty...the best tool for this job is your hands...so roll up your sleeves and get in there and mix everything together...

Once its at the above stage you can form the mixture into patties which can be refrigerated to use the next day or frozen for up to I would say 3 months.

As you can see the pepper chunks are still pretty big...you can make them smaller but I like having them bigger because it gives the burgers more texture.  These burgers can be cooked on an outside grill, an indoor grill, or a skillet.  Sometime I want to try using quinoa instead of rice...that will be my next project!  Enjoy!!