Black beans

[Green Aura]

I've got loads of veggie burger recipes - all shapes and sizes (well generally burger shaped and sized ). They're always an easy standby for if I need to feed the gal. Shout out if you want any others.

[Weedo]

Hi

The two LOL cooks at one of the Cafe's I frequent serve a black bean & chicken et. al. toasted pitta bread. They tell me they soak the beans overnight, drain and then microwave without any additional moisture; the beans certainly have retained their colour.

[Odsox]

microwave without any additional moisture

I was quite excited about this, but unfortunately it didn't work.
I soaked some black beans for 8 hours, drained them and put them in a small casserole with a lid.
Not knowing how long to microwave I tried it on high for 4 minutes and tested them, but still crunchy hard. Then gave them another couple of minutes and this time they had transformed into bullets!

Before hand I had Googled "microwaved dried beans" to get some idea of power and length of cooking, but found nothing apart from conventional microwave cooking in water.
Shame, I thought that might be the answer.

[Weedo]

Odsox
I will go back to the LOL's for further details

[Green Aura]

Here you go.
http://www.livestrong.com/article/43431 ... microwave/

While obviously much quicker cooking times I'm guessing the water needed would still leach out some of the colour - probably worth another try though. Oh, and I wouldn't recommend adding the salt the article says to do. I've never managed to cook any dried pulses, other than lentils, when adding salt before cooking.

[Odsox]

Well yes, that's pretty much exactly what I found when Googling. All of them cooked "conventionally" in water, no different than in a saucepan. In fact if you add up the cooking times it can take over an hour (65 mins) on that recipe, so not your first choice of cooking methods anyway ... a pressure cooker would be better.

This method Weedo mentioned uses no extra water than that which clings to the beans after soaking.

[BernardSmith]

You can adapt this recipe too. I have used other kinds of beans (red kidney or chickpeas) and you can use other spices (eg curry blends) and I would bake this (at 375 F for about 30 minutes). What I do is dump everything in my processor except the breadcrumbs (or the oats) and pulse until blended then I add about 1 cup of breadcrumbs of oats. I then lightly oil a baking sheet and make a rectangle of the mixture on the sheet and then divide the rectangle into 6 or 8 sections and separate each section just a little. My version of soylent green (I call it cilbean (cilantro-bean). .

[Green Aura]

I always use my pressure cooker and batch cook then freeze in portions.

Good idea about making the rectangle. There's only three of us though so I rarely make a full recipe. I do often bake them though, depending whether I need the oven for something else too.