Great Vegetarian recipes. Black bean burgers by Shelley Hopkins

This Week has been great for vegetarian meals, and they have all been yummy.  I had no plan to eat this way, as a matter of fact we were eating meal number three when I realized we were eating meatless.  It all started when I got my latest issue of Cooking Light Magazine with a beautiful cover photo of sweet potato soup.  I guess we weren’t entirely vegetarian, because the soup had a few bacon pieces as garnish.

First we ate home made black bean burgers, and they were extremely good, so good that I took an extra one to work, reheated it in the microwave, and it was still great.  The next night we had creamy mushroom fettuccini, followed by black bean tacos and then the wonderful sweet potato soup.  I don’t know which meal was my favorite of the week, but when even my husband didn’t seem to mind the lack of meat, I knew we had a good group of recipes.  Of course, we had salmon burgers from Costco today, just to meat up a little.

Here are two of the  recipes that we enjoyed so much this week.  I hope you find them to be as good as we did. For the rest of the recipes check out the Thanksgiving issue of Cooking Light, November 2013. 

Black bean burgers

1 (15 oz) can black beans, rinsed and drained

¼ cup chopped onion

¼ cup fresh cilantro

1 Tbs minced garlic

2 tsp soy sauce

½ tsp kosher salt

¼ cup bread crumbs

1 large egg, lightly beaten

Preheat oven to 425.  Place beans in a large bowl and lightly mash.  Stir in onion and the rest of the ingredients listed above.  Divide mixture into 4 portions and shape each into a ½ inch thick patty.  Arrange on baking sheet coated with cooking spray.  Bake at 425 for 8 minutes; turn after 6 minutes. 

I had to cook these much longer than the 8 minutes, I think I cooked them more like 10 – 15 minutes.  I then melted a little cheese on each burger and served the traditional way, for us that was with coleslaw, mayonnaise or ketchup and mustard.

Creamy Sweet Potato Soup

2 pounds sweet potatoes, halved lengthwise (about 2 large)

¼ cup water

2 tsp olive oil

1 cup chopped onion

½ tsp cumin

¼ tsp red pepper

4 cups chicken stock

¼ tsp salt

6 bacon slices

1 oz fresh Parmesan cheese

Place potatoes, cut sides down, in a microwave safe dish and add the water.  Cover with plastic wrap and microwave on high for 15 minutes.  Cool slightly, and discard skins.

Heat saucepan over medium high heat.  Add oil, swirl to coat.  Add onion and sauté 1 minute or until translucent.  Stir in cumin and red pepper.  Add stock to pan; bring to a boil.  Place half of the sweet potato and half of stock mixture in a blender.  Remove center piece of blender lid (to allow steam to escape); secure blender lid on blender.  Place a clean towel over opening in blender lid to avoid hot splatters.  Blend until smooth.  Pour pureed soup into a large bowl, and repeat with the rest of the potatoes and stock.  Stir in salt.  Divide soup into 6 bowls and sprinkle cooked bacon and cheese on top.

I have a hand held blender that I can put directly into the sauce pan to blend, so I removed the stock from the heat, added the potatoes and blended all of the soup at one time.  I still had to be careful not to splash out hot soup. 

Enjoy!