Vegetarian Recipe: Butter Bean Burgers

Every week, when I think about potential future blog topics, I always include a vegetarian recipe. And every week, when I get a little busier than I expected (or I played with my kids too hard and I'm too tired to blog), the first potential post to go is always the vegetarian recipe. The result being that despite my good intentions, I have posted very few vegetarian recipes to this blog.

Now, that's just not fair to all the great vegetarian dishes in my recipe files considering that eating less meat is one of the top four things you can do to lessen your impact on the environment. (The others are energy efficient homes, energy efficient transportation, and buying less.)

So coincidentally as I was feeling bad about that, greeen sheeep aka EnviRambo blogged last week about going veggie for lent and needing some vegetarian recipes. Plus, I signed up to teach a vegetarian cooking class at my church later this week. So I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to devote a few days to recipes.

My focus for the cooking class is Beyond Beans and Rice: Eating Beans to Save Money and Use Up Your Food Storage. Lots of bean recipes ahead...

So long-winded preface aside, here's the recipe I'll be teaching at the class:

Butter Bean Burgers

SERVES 4
COST: $.75 per serving (not including buns or toppings)*

2 cups cooked butter beans (or 1 can butter beans, drained and rinsed)
1 small onion, chopped
6 saltine crackers, crushed (or lately I've been using bread crumbs)
1 egg, beaten
1/2 c. shredded cheddar cheese
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 c. vegetable oil for frying

• In a medium bowl, mash the butter beans with a fork.
• Mix in onion, crackers, egg, cheese, garlic powder, salt, and pepper.
• Shape into burger sized patties. Makes about 5 patties.
  
• Heat oil in a large skillet.
• Fry patties until golden, about 3 minutes on each side.
• Serve on buns with the fixin's.
  

If you glance at my recipe index, you might easily come to the conclusion that 95% of the time, we eat bean burgers around here. Truthfully, we do eat a lot of bean burgers, and I can explain the reason why in one simple sentence: My husband is not a vegetarian.

My dear hubby is a meat and potatoes kind of man. He's happy with burritos (or anything related to a burrito). He enjoys some Italian now and again. Pizza is nice. But if I start throwing in too many nights of tofu or tempeh or any of those other strange vegetarian additions, he starts to protest.

So we eat bean burgers because they are sort of similar to eating meat and they go well with french fries.

*Note that costs are estimates based on prices in my area. Your costs may vary.