Though we’re not vegetarians, we’re also not big meat eaters in my house so burgers are a bit of a rarity. However, the other day I checked my inbox and sitting there in my BACN was a newsletter from eatbetteramerica with new recipes. The Spicy Chili Bean Burgers caught my eye and since I didn’t have any buns, gluten-free or not, in my house, I figured I’d just make up the patties and figure it out from there.

Then of course I looked around in my pantry and realised I didn’t have half the ingredients on hand. Undaunted, the queen of substitution soldiered on of course.

The main ingredients for this recipe are bran cereal, spicy chili beans and cooking oats. As always, I leave it to you, dear reader to decide if you’re going to chance oats or not but I had them on hand and added them in. I was not going to use bran cereal so I grabbed the end of a box of Corn Chex and spicy chili beans would have caused an uproar in my house even if I did have them laying about so I grabbed a tin of chickpeas instead and crushed those up.

There isn’t much else to this recipe really- since I wasn’t using already spiced chili beans, I was a little concerned about spice and added in some chopped fresh coriander, salt and pepper. You can mix up your patties any way you want but frankly I have an aversion to meatballs and meatloafs because of all that slippery, eggy-mess you end up palming into shape so I put my ingredients in a ziplock and mashed them up.

The patties came out ok but I would have liked them to be  a little sturdier. Ah well, I fried them in olive oil and served on corn tortillas with sliced grape tomatoes, green onions and a drizzle of sweet chili sauce. Beware- if you’re going to use sweet chili sauce for anything make sure you check the label- some have yeast in the ingredients.

I was pleasantly surprised with this recipe even though I ended up taking all of the kick out of it. The patties browned up nicely and solidified and tasted awesome.

Tasty Factor: thumbs up from everyone!

Poopy Factor: just a little- the patties can be a little brittle and are definitely messy to make.