The Butter Bean 'Burger'

Whether you want to look at this as a meat substitute or a junk food craving satisfier – this recipe is great. 

And when the rains arrive, if you have a craving for wada-pao, I suspect, adding the usual wada ingredients to the butter beans instead of potato and fried besan will give you all the flavour and very little of the heavy stuff. 

1 cup of cooked butter beans

½ onion chopped

½ cup of bread crumbs

3 cloves of garlic

1 egg

Handful of crisp mint (and/or parsley)

Salt to taste

Method:

Mash the butter beans up first and then add all the other ingredients except the egg. Check for salt and seasoning (you could, ‘indianize’ these with some garam masala powder, coriander, grated ginger, fresh green chili etc). Add the egg now and mix well. Check for consistency (kebabs and cutlets are one of my culinary achilles-heels so I always 'try out' if I can't tell whether the kebab/burger will 'hold' on the pan). When you try and form a medium sized ball does it hold its shape? If its too ‘wet’ add more bread crumbs, if its too dry, beat an egg and add a few teaspoons at a time. Make flattened patties. Heat oil in a large frying pan, when the oil is hot, place your patties in and lower the heat to medium. Fry them for about 6 minutes on each side.

Some lettuce, ketchup and burger buns are now all you need to assemble your burgers or if you’ve Indianized  them, roti and raita will go perfectly.