FOOD: Meat Heathen Bean Burger

MEAT HEATHEN BEAN BURGERS
by E. Fritzius

NOTE: While I'm not one of them, I've heard that there are actually people in the world who don't eat meat of any kind. As difficult as it is to believe, these Meat Heathens, (who call themselves "vegetarians,") only eat foodstuffs that don't contain actual meat, (such as vegetables, fruits or Spam.) Meat Heathens are real downers for those of us who enjoy the flesh of dead animals and lots of it. You can't go anywhere with Meat Heathens cause they'll always whine if you take them to a steakhouse and will sit in their seat, picking through their salad and nibbling on a baked potato while being tormented by the delicious smell of dead cow. Bunch of wusses as far as I'm concerned. Beef may be murder, but at least it's tasty. Anyway, while I don't feel the pain of the Meat Heathen, I have come up with a meatless recipe that they might find of some interest since it will allow them to simulate the joys found in a hamburger without actually getting any meat in their mouths. The recipe also involves one of my favorite foodstuffs, black beans.

INGREDIENTS:

1 can of black beans, preferably with the jalapenos if you can get em, but plain beans will do.
1 half cup of Martha White Buttermilk Corn Meal Mix.
1 teaspoon of cumin
1 teaspoon pepper
1 teaspoon of garlic salt
Olive oil
1 half onion (finely chopped, optional.)

PROCEDURE:
Open your can of black beans and drain the nasty black bean juice into the sink. Don't drain ALL of the nasty black bean juice, though, cause you'll need the beans to be somewhat moist.

Now take a big spoon and squoosh the beans. Squoosh em all up good and squishy until they are paste-like.

Next add the pepper, garlic salt, cumin and Martha white corn meal. (And at this point I'd like to give a shout out to the corn meal. It's great stuff. It makes tasty buttermilk corn bread and is helpfully self-rising.) You can also add onions, or jalapenos if your beans don't come with them naturally. Mix all this up for a while.

Pour some olive oil into a skillet and begin heating it.

There are a couple of different methods for the next step. The bean burgers will need a light outer coating of corn-meal mix. You can either apply the coating by pouring the corn-meal onto a plate and then dropping patties of bean mixture into the meal, or you can just dump spooned wads of bean mixture into the skillet, flatten them into patties with your spatula, and then sprinkle the corn meal atop. I recommend the first method, but have had success with both.

A note about patties: Unlike hamburger meat, bean patties don't cook well if they're too thick. I recommend flattening them to about 2/3 inch thickness. Also, bean patties don't always remain in patty form while cooking. Until the corn-meal has time to cook, the patties are irritatingly fragile and can come apart, especially when you're trying to flip them. You'll likely wind up with a skillet full of bean patty sections. This is to be expected. I've tried the recipe with eggs added, but it didn't seem to help much.

Once your beans have been pattied and mealed, it's time to fry those mothers! Fry em on medium heat. Occasionally peek underneath the patties to check if they're ready for flipping. Once they're a bit brown, flip em. Once both sides are brown and the patties are pretty solid then they're done. You can now put em on buns or just on a plate. I've found that these bean burgers taste pretty good just by themselves. I do, however, recommend that you at least have the decency to put ketchup on them. They taste great with ketchup or with spaghetti sauce. They also are tremendous with alfredo sauce, especially Ragu Garlic Alfredo (unless you're a Vegan and don't eat alfredo, in which case you're probably going to whine and form protest groups over my abuse of beans during the bean squooshing process, or that I'm even using beans in the first place since they were cruelly yanked from the vine to die. You'll excuse me while I go beat my houseplants with a leather belt..)