Spicy Black Bean Burger

After eating leftover brisket for 3 straight days, I figured I should take a meal off from meat. Tonight was another dig through the pantry and vegi drawer and see what I can make. Lucky for me I had all the ingredients to make black bean burgers. I've never made them before but have read a bunch of recipes so I just decided to make my own. One of my problems of when I cook like this, I don't really measure out anything. That is why I don't have any measurements for most of the ingredients. Just add as much as you like to your taste.

They came out really good. I wrapped them in Lettuce as opposed to bread (protein style!) because I didn't have buns.  I probably wouldn't have used buns anyways. My dry rub has a kick to it so with that and the cumin they were pretty spicy (which I love). The burger was a bit hard to handle. It didn't completely fall apart in my hands, but a few pieces did. I read that if refrigerate the mixture prior to adding in the bread crumbs, this helps. I hope you enjoy!

Serving Size:  1 Patty

Ingredients

½ Cup Black Beans (drained & rinsed)

¼ Cup Canned or fresh corn

Diced red & green bell peppers

Diced Jalapeno

Diced onion

Smoked Salt

Waterman’s Kitchen Pork Dry rub

Cumin

Bread Crumbs

Leaf Lettuce

Cooking Directions

Combine Black beans, corn, jalapeno and half of the bell pepper and seasoning

Place in a food processor and pulse 5-7 times (make sure its still chunky and not a pile of mush)

Remove from food processor

Fold in remaining bell peppers and bread crumbs

Heat a cast iron skillet on med/high heat

Add high temp oil when pan is hot

Form mixture into a patty and move directly onto the hot pan

Cook on each side for a few minutes

Cover and remove from heat for 5 minutes to heat all the way through

Weekend Smoking

Last weekend, we finally had nice sunny weather. I have a ton of yard work to do so I was happy to finally get working on it. Since I was going to be in my backyard all day, I decided it would be a good idea bust out the smoker for the first time in 2012. Last summer I worked a lot on pork shoulder and ribs. This summer, I am going to focus on Sausage (see previous blog) and brisket. I am not going to go into detail on all the recipes on what I made but just a run down on what I made. Whenever I smoke, I try to keep the smoker filled to capacity in order to maximize the coals and wood. Here is a list of what I made.

Black Bean and Quinoa Lettuce Wraps

Here is another great healthy Quinoa recipe. I saw a similar recipe to this on pinterest but modified it to my own tastings. It came out really good. I had it as a dinner, but I think it would be better on a hot summer day for lunch or an afternoon snack.

Hickory Smoked Salt

I was smoking a bunch of meat today and had a little room left in my smoker so I threw some coarse sea salt in the smoker for a few hours!

Southwest Shrimp Quinoa

Over the past few month's I've been trying to eat a lot healthier. One of the things I decided to add to my diet is Quinoa. I never had it before so I looked up a bunch of recipes. Man are there a lot out there. A good amount of the recipes used it in salads cold. I was looking for a one pot hot dinner item. After researching for an hour or so, I merged a few different recipes together and added my twist to it and came up with a Southwest Shrimp Quinoa. The Shrimp can always be replaced with tofu or omitted completely to make it vegetarian. I cook this every few weeks. I also make enough so I have left overs for lunch the next day.

Ingredients

½ lbs Shrimp – chopped into 1/3’s (depending on size)

¼ Red Bell pepper – Large Diced

¼ Green Bell Pepper – Large Diced

¼ Onion – Diced

½ jalapeno – diced

High Temp cooking oil

Juice 1 lime

1 Cup Quinoa

1 ½ Cup water

Hand full Cilantro

Cooking Directions

Heat oil in pan

Add vegi’s and Sautee for 5 minutes

Add in shrimp and lime juice and sauté for 5 mins more on until shrimp turns pink

Remove shrimp

Add in water and bring to a boil

Add in quinoa

Reduce to a simmer, cover and cook for ~20 minutes

Add shrimp back in

Add in cilantro and Fluff everything together

Serve hot.

Lasagna Time

When I was a kid, we used to go on skiing trips to June Mountain with a few families. we would rent a big house for all of us to stay in. We always made a menu for the week to save money an not eat out every meal. One of the staple meals we would have is a frozen Lasagna from Smart & Final (CostCo like store). It was easy to make and filling for a large group. Other than on those trips, I never really ate lasagna. Now that I like to cook and with the new gadgets I got form Christmas, I decided to make Lasagna. Once I started thinking about it, I realized I can make almost everything from scratch. Well, I did and it ended up taking 2 days, but it was worth it at the end.

Oven "Pulled Pork" Fajita's

Tonight I knew I wasn't going to have any time to cook dinner because I had band practice for 2 hours. When trying to decide what to cook the night before, I realized I had 1/4 of an onion, 1/4 green & red bell pepper, and 1/4 of a jalapeno. I didn't have any meat in the freezer other than a small amount of pork shoulder that I had cubed left over from when I was making sausage. I decided to defrost it and think of what to make the next day.