Sweet Potato, Black Bean, Corn and Millet Burgers

Recently I was in Richmond, Virginia visiting my mom. On Monday we went to a few consignment stores with my Great Aunt Mary (shout out, Aunt Mary!) and stopped at Good Foods Grocery for lunch. I had the Black Bean Sweet Potato Burger, and enjoyed it so much, I immediately checked Pinterest for similar recipes! I found a fantastic sounding recipe at cookieandkate.com: Sweet Potato Black Bean Veggies Burgers. (By the way, this recipe comes with a very sweet story about a cancer survivor that’s totally worth the read!) Since the version I had included corn, I further adapted this recipe to include said corn, albeit not in the way I’d hoped or imagined (I had to use canned instead of fresh).

Sweet Potato, Black Bean, Corn and Millet Burgers (Serves 8)

• 1½ pounds sweet potatoes
• ⅓ cup millet
• 1 cup old fashioned oats
• 1 can (15 ounces) black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 can corn kernels, no salt added, rinsed and drained
• ½ small onion, diced
• ½ cup lightly packed fresh cilantro leaves, chopped
• 2 teaspoons cumin powder
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
• ½ teaspoon cayenne powder
• ½ teaspoon kosher salt
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil

Ingredients!

Oats!

I apparently deleted my baked sweet potato photo by accident, so I borrowed this one from http://www.simplyscratch.com/2014/04/sweet-potato-jalapeno-mash.html

First, I tossed the sweet potatoes on a sheet pan and threw them in a 400 degree oven for an hour. I pulled them out and let them cool while I went grocery shopping!

Then I cooked the millet with 1 cup of water over medium low heat for about 25 minutes and let that cool, too.

Millet cooking.

Ground oats!

I tossed the oats in my food processor and ground them down until they were still coarse, but no longer full flakes.

MY actual potatoes and MY actual left thumb!

Chopped potatoes!

Mmm, spices.

Corn and beans.

Chopped onions, added to the sweet potatoes.

Spices and cilantro, too!

Then I prepped the rest of the ingredients, peeling and chunking the sweet potatoes, cutting the onions and cilantro, measuring the seasonings, and draining and rinsing the beans and corn.

Mash it.

Mashed.

With corn and beans added.

Plus millet.

And oats.

All mixed!

Then I did the mash! The sweet potato mash! I smooshed the sweet potatoes, onions, cilantro and spices together until smooth, then added the corn and beans and stirred with a wooden spoon. When that was well incorporated, I stirred in the millet and oats, then tossed the whole bowl in the fridge for an hour. (Note to self: next time, wait two hours, the mixture will be firmer.)

First batch of patties.

Flip carefully and brown on the other side.

When we were ready for dinner, I heated up my new favorite toy, my cast iron skillet, with 1 tablespoon of the oil. I formed the mixture into 8 patties, and fried them up four at a time, adding an additional tablespoon of oil to fry the second batch.

The original burger was served with pepper jack cheese, but we had Swiss in the fridge so we used that, topped it with salsa, lettuce and tomato, and ate these babies on Lebanese style pita! I have to say these were really good, but I missed the heat of the pepper jack, and next time I’ll make sure to get some. The Hubs finished eating his first, which means two thumbs up! I layered the four remaining burgers with wax paper and put them in the freezer for later. Yay for batch cooking!

These burgers are LARGE and SUPER FILLING. You could probably make the burgers smaller to reduce the calories. All in all, as pictured, this is about 450 calories. I served it with slow cooked mushrooms and spinach on the side. Will definitely make these again!