This easy vegan black bean burger is bursting with flavor: the patties are also gluten free and topped with spicy mayo & sprouts.
This post was created in partnership with Bob’s Red Mill. All opinions are our own.
Life is full of unexpected twist and turns, and if you’ve been around long enough, you’ll know it doesn’t always go as planned. Your friend bags on you for coffee. Your flight is cancelled. Your job is downsized. You don’t get in to your dream school. You were supposed to be married by now. You weren’t supposed to be divorced by now. You’re unexpectedly diagnosed with a disease, or living with un-diagnosed pain. Keep reading for a bit more on unexpected twists and turns, and how this relates to this vegan black bean burger recipe.
Related: Best Vegan Dinner Recipes
Unexpected twists and turns
Our minds may stray to the unexpected negative scenarios first, but there are positives too of course. And sometimes they sneak up on us. You find a person you want to spend your life with. You find joy in a long-lost creative outlet. You give birth to a baby, or adopt a baby. A broken relationship if your life is healed. You come to peace with a past trauma.
Such a crazy roller coaster, this life. Creating recipes and taking photographs of food is the last thing I thought I’d be doing with mine. Collaborating creatively with my husband, starting a podcast — all fairly unexpected. And the food? I never dreamed I would have a passion for healthy eating. The thought that I’d create a vegan black bean burger recipe? Literally, the last thing I’d imagine doing in my life. Yet here we are, and healthy plant based food has become a long-standing passion for me.
How about you: do you have thoughts on unexpected life twists and turns, and where your road has taken you? We’d love to hear – let us know in the comments below.
How to make this vegan black bean burger
This vegan black bean burger was created especially for our friends at Bob’s Red Mill using their gluten-free oats. And it’s one of our favorite vegan recipes to date! The trick to making a vegan black bean burger recipe is finding a binder that avoids the eggs or bread crumbs used in many typical veggie burgers. Here we’ve used sweet potato, which becomes a fantastic glue-like substance, along with oats for some texture.
For flavor, we took some cues from a recent visit to a fantastic Japanese restaurant in Santa Fe. We’ve used soy sauce and mirin to simulate a teriyaki flavor in the burger, and a few sauteed shiitake mushrooms are the perfect topping. Along with some sriracha mayo, it makes a killer combination. Or course if you want to go big on teriyaki, you could brush the entire burger with our Easy Homemade Teriyaki Sauce! Or you could go another direction with homemade BBQ sauce.
If you’re gluten-free, feel free to serve this vegan black bean burger on a gluten-free English muffin. If you’re vegan, use vegan mayo. It turns out seriously flavorful, with the perfect texture: one of our very best bean recipes!
This vegan black bean burger is baked (not grillable — here’s our Grilled Veggie Burger). It takes about 1 hour to prepare. To us, the effort was well worth it. We made them on the weekend when we had a bit more time and they made great leftovers. Feel free to double the recipe and freeze leftovers for quick meals as well. Let us know if you try out this vegan black bean burger — as well as whether you have any life twists and turns to share.
Looking for more vegan recipes?
Outside of this vegan black bean burger, here are some of our favorite vegan recipes:
- Vegan Pot Pie with Savory Sage Crust
- Mexican Sweet Potatoes
- Incredible Vegan Nachos
- Jackfruit BBQ Sandwich
- Instant Pot Thai Sweet Potatoes
- Moroccan Cauliflower Soup
- Grilled Mango Tacos with Dream Sauce
- Very Veggie Vegan Pizza
- Chocolate Tahini Vegan No Bake Cookies
- All our vegan recipes!
This vegan black bean burger recipe is…
Vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, plant-based, dairy-free, and sugar-free.
Print
Vegan Black Bean Burger
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 50 minutes
- Total Time: 1 hour
- Yield: 4 1x
Description
This easy vegan black bean burger is bursting with flavor: it’s also gluten free and topped with spicy mayo & sprouts.
Ingredients
For the black bean burger
- 1 small sweet potato (½ pound)
- ¾ cup Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free old fashioned rolled oats
- 2 green onions
- 15-ounce can black beans
- ½ cup sunflower seeds (shelled)
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- 2 teaspoons smoked paprika
- 1 ½ tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 ½ tablespoons mirin
For the shiitake mushrooms *or substitute Shiitake Bacon
- 4 shiitake mushrooms
- 1 splash each olive oil, mirin, and soy sauce
To serve
- 4 English muffins (gluten-free if desired, or omit)
- Spicy Mayo, Special Burger Sauce, or Avocado Mayo (about 1 tablespoon per serving)
- Alfalfa sprouts, for serving
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375°F.
- Wash the sweet potato and prick it with a fork. Microwave until cooked through, about 8 minutes, turning halfway through. Slice open and allow to cool until the steam dissipates and it is cool to the touch.
- Place oats on cutting board and roughly chop with a knife to obtain a mixed texture. Thinly slice green onions. Drain and rinse the beans.
- In a bowl, combine onions, oats, beans, sunflower seeds, kosher salt, garlic powder, smoked paprika, soy sauce and mirin. Mix with your hands and lightly mash the beans with your fingers. Add ½ cup sweet potato and mix to combine.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Form into 4 patties and place on the baking sheet. Bake 20 minutes on one side, then flip and bake 20 minutes on the other side. Cool slightly before serving.
- Remove the stems and slice the shiitake mushroom caps. In a small skillet, add a splash of olive oil, mirin, and soy sauce, then saute the mushrooms until soft, about 1 minute.
- Make the Spicy Mayo.
- To serve, place the burgers on toasted English muffins and top with mushrooms, spicy mayo, and alfalfa sprouts.
- Category: Main Dish
- Method: Baked
- Cuisine: American
Keywords: Vegan Black Bean Burger, Bean Burger, Veggie Burger, Sweet Potato Burger, Veggie Burger Recipe, Vegan Dinner Ideas, Healthy Dinner Ideas, Vegetarian Dinner Ideas
Oh my Gosh!!! This is something for me, I am crazy about BURGER. If I have to choose something to eat from outside than burger is something I always choose.
Today your recipe inspired me to make burger at home and enjoy this delicious recipe whenever I want.
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I guess great minds thin alike: I posted recipe for teriyaki sushi burgers to my blog yesterday :)
Your burgers look truly drool worthy :)
SO much love for this! I’m always looking for a great veggie burger recipe – pinning this to make ASAP!
Love the texture of these burger patties! They sound amazing!
It is indeed a crazy ride, this life! Me myself have not gotten very far in this food blog universe as I just got started, but I definitely did not imagine even starting one a couple of years ago. But what I’ve learned in general is that one should never think we’re here to just do one thing. Life has a lot of different opportunities in store if you let it. I’m sounding like a cliche machine right now, but clichees are the truest!
Loving the burger, that would seriously be something that would fit the recipes on my blog.
You always leave the most positive, beautiful messages that pick up my day. And I’m IN LOVE with these photos – the lighting and backdrop are SPOT ON!!!
Going to make these with Andrew after the neuro exam weekend now. Thanks for being my fav inspiration <3
These sound delicious! I’m trying to cut down on the meat that we take in. But also, my husband just bought a new grill and wants to make “burger sunday” a thing in our house. So I miiiiight have to bring up the idea of a veggie burger to meet in the middle??
I see that these are baked, though. I imagine they might fall apart on the grill.
I love that! If you prebaked them, you could definitely warm them up on the grill… it’d at least impart a little charred flavor :)
I just made these tonight and they are so good. Definitely quite filling with all of that wonderful fiber.
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So glad you enjoyed these — thanks for making them!
I got your calendar last year and spent 2016 making a ton of your recipes. The butternut squash mac and cheese, cashew lettuce wraps, and the nut loaf are our favorites!
I made these burgers after the new year (calendar ran out) and my family loved them! Any advice on fixing them in advance and freezing them (cooked or uncooked)? Thanks!
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Oh SO fun! Thank you so much for writing – we love hearing from people who have the calendar! We do have a calendar for 2017 if you are interested (since you mentioned it running out)! It has some repeats from 2016 but new ones as well. Thanks for letting us know your favorites — it is always wonderful to hear what people gravitate towards!
SO glad you loved the burgers! I have never made them and frozen them, but I’d go ahead and cook them before freezing. I think they’d work if you freeze and then let defrost in the refrigerator — then I’d heat them in a 350 or 375 oven prior to serving. The texture might be slightly different, but I think they’d still be good! Let us know if you try it!
These were delicious!! I doubled it so we have some for the freezer. Everyone loved them, especially my four year old!