Weeknight Cooking

We've found a couple of burgers we like at Burger Fusion at the mall of La Crosse.  One is the Kansas City, which combines burger and pork with a topping of coleslaw and bbq chips right on the burger.  Nothing wrong with this combo!  The burger Julia likes is the black bean burger made, I found out later, with black beans only, no meat.  When I decided I wanted to make my own version, I found a

recipe that also only called for the black beans themselves, a variety of spices, including oregano and thyme, some bread crumbs and some yellow cornmeal.  What might happen, I wondered, if the black bean portion was simply added hamburger?  I glossed over the recipe, picked and chose the ingredients I knew we would like, then added that to a pound of my standard selection of 1/2 burger, 1/2 turkey.

To this I added one egg to 'fuse' all the ingredients, rolled the burgers into balls then flattened them with a slight palm dip in the center.  Because of the density of the burger (beans especially, but the cornmeal and bread crumbs too), this burger does not cook quite the same as the normal burger that crusts on the outside then darkens as it moves to the center.  This ends up a very solid burger and takes awhile longer to cook; but the fried bean, herb and spice combination packs in little pockets of flavor that the normal burger can never match.  Two sliced pickles across the top, a flat leaf of romaine, ketchup on the both sides, a dash of mustard, all on a slightly crisped sesame bun, and this is one of the great burgers we've ever had.