Pimento Black Bean Sliders

You won’t miss the beef when you bite into these black bean burgers topped with melty pimento cheese. Perfect for game day or a party.

With all the holiday gatherings, new-year get togethers and random pop-ins to watch football with my husband, the charcuterie boards and meat-based dinners had started to feel like too much of a good thing. It was time for a change, at least for a meal or two, and since it’s winter something hearty was in order. But I was stumped.

Quite fortuitously, one of our vegetarian friends mentioned last week that he had been eating black bean burgers a lot lately. As soon as he said this I knew what I had to make for the diet rebalance that my husband and I needed. I already have a recipe for Black Bean Burgers with Shiitake Bacon that I’m very happy with but somehow it has fallen off my radar.

I used the same base recipe here to achieve the same texture–crispy brown bits on the outside with a meaty quality from the bean chunks and add-ins, far from dry or mushy. The binders also allow these burgers to hold together well so frying them in a pan is easy. There was no sense tampering with a tried-and-true but with football on the television lately, little sliders sounded like a better idea than full-sized burgers.

Instead of shiitake “bacon” in the previous recipe I used pimento (pimiento?) cheese and pickled jalapeño peppers here for a little zing. The pimento cheese is a store-bought spread made primarily with extra sharp cheddar which went well with the seasoned burgers but feel free to use your favorite cheese.

While I kept things simple here you can do much more to create additional layers of flavor by adding flavored mayonnaise and/or using different seasonings on the patties.

The most important tip for black bean burgers is to pop the whole beans in the oven for a few minutes to eliminate excess moisture. This will ensure that you don’t get the mushy texture some black bean burger recipes suffer from. This technique helps to come close to a real burger experience. The slider size is great for parties, too…or for the more-frequent-than-usual football drop-ins around here lately.