Eats - Franklins Flashy Homemade Pinto Bean Veggie Burgers

That title is a mouthful; apropos for a recipe post.

Let me start off by saying there's any easy way to this and it's by using canned beans. It will save you just about an entire days work.

The rather ambitious way of doing this is described below, but it is really worth it. Let me explain that I had all of these ingredients in my kitchen or I would not have made them. I saw different versions of this recipe, mostly done with black beans, but I didn't have black beans so I used what I had.

Something I don't think I mentioned on here is that a short time before Christmas two little elves showed up on our doorstep at 11pm one evening with LITERALLY boxes and bags of groceries. Most of it was what some in Utah call food storage items. It was amazing and so nice of them because we have food for a long time even a few months later we still have so much of it. My only issue with it was that I didn't have room for it all - not an issue really. One of the items that accompanied our large haul was a bag of pinto beans. I was like WTF am I going to do with these? I had made refried beans with them before and knew my mom used them for ham hock and beans but wasn't sure I wanted to cook either one of those.

On our quest to eat healthier - more balanced - I've been trying to cook more vegetarian style meals. Not necessarily vegan (I could never be that hard-core) but cutting out all of the red meat and pork we eat was something I wanted to try. I use the word balanced because there are times when we stuff our faces with sugar, red meat and greasy foods which I know we won't cut out completely but trying some recipes that are less harsh on our bodies during the work week may help balance our diets out.

It has helped Tyrone with his stomach issues and will help me with my pre-diabetic issues.

With that said I wanted to try making these from scratch because I thought it would be masochistically fun. Tyrone helped me out a bunch so that was nice. Back in September I posted our easy black bean burgers that use frozen patties that we eat all of the time. These are much different than those and more fulfilling.

I started the night before and soaked 2 cups of beans in a pot over night in 8 cups of water.

Before cooking, drain and rinse beans after they have soaked.

Right when I got home from work I started cooking the beans in 6 cups of water and let them simmer for 2 hours.

While the beans are simmering you can start roasting your vegetables. The great thing with veggie burgers is that there is no exact way or specific thing that you have to put in them. You can put whatever  veggies in them that you want.

I used carrots, mushrooms and corn with onions and cloves of garlic. Start cooking the vegetables that take the longest to soften like the carrots and garlic for about ten minutes or so and then start adding the rest of the veggies. I drizzled olive oil over mine. In total my veggies took about 40 minutes to roast. I put the corn in last because it didn't take long at all for those to soften. 450 degree oven.

Once they are cooked to your desire you can chop them all up with a knife or put in a food processor like I did. I chopped mine up finely but you can leave them as chunky as you want.

Once the beans are cooked mash them up in a bowl and add 1 egg (or if you want to keep this vegan you can leave the egg out) with some bread crumbs and you can begin to form your patties.

Update: I forgot to mention that this is where you will want to add your seasoning. I put sage, minced onion, parsley, chili powder, sesame seeds, thyme and a bit of garlic powder. You can add whatever seasonings you want. This is such a flexible recipe.

Mine were really sticky and I had to be very careful when frying them in the pan. They come apart easily even with the egg in them. You can add rice to your mixture if you want. I'm going to try this next time.

they're not very pretty but don't let that put  you off

We fixed ours up with tomato, avocado and provolone cheese and mayo and mustard.

They are so good and you don't feel sluggish and tired after eating them. Give them a try!