I’ve poured over so many amazing food blogs, drooled over more incredible recipes than I can count and admired the writing and photography skills of these countless bloggers. So many of these women have inspiring stories, transformations, whole diet make-overs or expanded food and health knowledge to offer to the world. I don’t know that I have any of that. But I have a love for food, a passion for the way it affects our bodies, and a longing to be apart of this online community.
So with a leap of faith, a lot of planning and a hopeful approach, today’s my beginning.
The pictures shown in this post are not my favorite, nor are they something I’m overly proud of. Since planning to start this blog, I’ve taken lots of picture of the recipes I make (some my own, some adapted from others) in anticipation of beginning my blog. The blog took longer to launch than I expected as life happened and time disappeared. In that time, we purchased a new camera and slowly but steadily I’m learning to take better photos. Even so, I wanted to start at the beginning, in hopes that you (and I) can see improvements, both in my posts and my writing.
Enough about my timidness, yet excitement as I venture into this new identity. Let’s talk about these burgers.
I don’t know about you, but my love for sweet potatoes has been more of a recent one in the past few years. My first encounter with these root vegetables was several years ago and like many it was in the form of a sweet potato casserole served over the holidays. I distinctly remember thinking, “Mashed sweet potatoes, covered with marshmallows and pecans? I’ll pass.” I’m happy to say that I’ve, since then, “wised up” and fallen in love with these delicious, nutritious, and so very versatile vegetables. While I’m not a vegetarian, I think sweet potatoes are essentially my new “meat”. I use them as the base for veggie burgers, chili, tacos, hash with eggs, atop a salad, pretty much any other way I can think up. In my book, these little jewels are worthy of adding to everything.
In addition to their great taste and versatility, sweet potatoes pack a lot of nutrition value.
- Vitamin B6 – can help prevent heart attacks
- Vitamin C – aides in fighting off colds and the flu, and helps with digestion, skin elasticity and stress coping
- Vitamin D – affects our energy levels, moods, and helps to build healthy bones, heart, nerves, skin, and teeth
- Magnesium – magnesium is the anti-stress mineral and helps with relaxation.
While mashing the beans by hand, I’ll admit I began to think that getting out the mixer would have been much easier and worth the trouble!
I added an egg to the mixture for it’s binding properties and then went with almond meal for the added protein and ground flax-seed for the Omega–3 Fatty Acids.
Sweet Potato Veggie Burger
Ingredients
- 1 cans black beans drained and rinsed
- 1 large sweet potato baked/peeled/mashed (about 2 cups)
- 1 Egg
- 2 Tbsp tahini
- 2 tsp maple syrup
- 1 tsp lemon juice
- ¼ tsp cayenne
- ½ tsp black pepper
- Salt to taste if needed
- 1/4 cup Almond Meal
- 2 Tbsp Ground Flax Seed
- 1/4 cup Panko crumbs
- Suggested Toppings: avocado caramelized, onions, tomato, sliced cheese, and romaine lettuce. Serve with whole grain buns and ketchup or condiments of choice
Instructions
- Bake sweet potato in oven or microwave – peel skin and place in large mixing bowl (or large bowl and mix by hand)
- Add drained beans to mixing bowl. Mash beans and sweet potato together until well blended.
- Add egg to potato and bean mixture and stir well.
- Combine the tahini, maple syrup, lemon juice, cayenne and black pepper and stir into potato mixture, then toss in the Almond Meal and Ground Flax Seed and stir until you have a soft and moist mixture. You should be able to form a patty with the mixture, add in more almond meal if needed. Once your patties are fairly firm, roll them in the Panko crumbs – I decided to just add the Panko crumbs to my batter to help them firm up without adding more Almond Meal and baked them rather than frying.
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and bake for 20 minutes. If you would prefer to fry these, use coconut oil and fry them for a few minutes on each side until browned.
- Serve on toasted bun with toppings of choice – I strongly recommend the avocado!
Notes
Nutrition info is for burger patty only.
Nutrition
Inspired by Happy.Healthy.Life’s Easy Sweet Potato Veggie Burgers
