Black bean sliders! Packed with flavor and nutrients, this is a vegan black bean burger recipe for the whole family.
Who doesn’t love homemade burgers? And when they’re easy, healthy, and flavorful, it’s even better.
We love making these Black Bean Sliders, whether on busy weeknights or throwing them on the grill at a cookout.
Black Bean Nutrition
Beans are some of the most inexpensive, widely available, and nutrient-dense foods out there.
We try to keep our pantries stocked with canned and dried beans for use in all sorts of recipes.
Beans are a rich source of protein, fiber, and a wide array of vitamins and minerals like iron, folate, calcium, and potassium. Plus, eating beans and other legumes has been shown to help lower the risk for various chronic diseases.
Introducing beans and legumes to kids earlier on in life, and in a variety of ways (like these sliders!), is a great way to get them acclimated to eating them.
How to Make Them
Making these burgers is super simple. It’s also a great way to incorporate mushrooms into your child’s diet, as they use dried porcini or shiitake mushrooms as the foundation.
First, you’re going to soak your dried mushrooms for 10 minutes in water to soften them.
Note that if you can’t find the dried mushrooms, you can omit them or use fresh mushrooms. However, I recommended looking for them because the dried mushrooms give incredible umami, meaty flavor to these bad boys.
Once your mushrooms are soft, drain the water and chop them. Reserve the water in case you need it for the next step.
Next, place your rolled oats into a food processor and pulse to create a fine oat flour. Add drained black beans, chopped mushrooms, soy sauce, garlic cloves, and seasonings and process until just-combined. Don’t over-process as you don’t want to make a cream sauce. Instead, aim to have some whole black beans still visible.
If your burger batter is too dry, add a little mushroom water from your previous soak. If it’s too wet, add more oats.
Taste your mixture and add more seasoning, salt, and pepper if needed.
Using your hands, formulate your mixture into 1/4-cup patties. Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a skillet on medium heat.
Add burger patties to your heated skillet and cook for 3-4 minutes per side until crispy.
Serve black bean sliders in slider buns with your favorite toppings and sides.
Find the full printable recipe below.
Black Bean Sliders
Ingredients
- 3 Tbsp dried porcini or shiitake mushrooms
- 2/3 cup rolled oats
- 1 15 oz can black beans, drained and rinsed
- 3 garlic cloves, chopped
- 1/2 tsp smoked paprika
- 1/2 tsp onion powder
- 1/2 tsp chili powder
- 3/4 tsp ground cumin
- 1 Tbsp soy sauce
- salt and pepper, as needed
Instructions
- Place the mushrooms in a bowl and cover with 1 cup hot water. Let soak for 10 minutes to soften, then drain, reserving the water. Roughly chop the mushrooms.
- Place the oats in the base of a food processor and process to create a fine oat flour. Add in the rest of the ingredients and process on low for ~30 seconds until combined. The mixture should be cohesive and easily able to stick together, but not creamy and smooth. You want some texture of the beans visible, as in the photos above. If the mixture is too dry, add in a little of the reserved mushroom soaking water. If too wet, add in more oat flour.
- Taste, the mixture should taste good before cooking. As needed, add more salt/pepper/seasonings.
- Form mixture into 1/4 cup patties, then heat a thin layer of olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the patties and cook for 3-4 minutes per side until crispy.
- Serve as you would your favorite sliders
Notes
Black bean sliders! Packed with flavor and nutrients, this is a vegan black bean burger recipe for the whole family.
Chime In: Have you tried this recipe? Let us know how you liked it below!
If you liked this recipe, we think you should try these too:
If we already have oat flour made, how much flour do we use? The whole oats grind down to much less volume, I’m assuming. Thank you!!!
Hi Hilary– I’d start with 1/2 cup and then see if you need more from there
These Black Bean Sliders look delicious. Can a use fresh porcini mushrooms instead of dried?
Hi Christine, yes you can use fresh porcini mushrooms
Thanks for the recipe Alex, these burgers went down a treat. Do you think it would be okay to make a batch for the freezer?
I don’t see why not! But I haven’t tried this way to say definitively
I found them to be perfect for freezing. I placed squares of greaseproof paper between each slider so they would separate easily and it worked really well.
Yum! I made these with a mix of black beans and chickpeas because it’s what I had open, fresh white mushrooms, and I threw in some spinach and bell pepper in the processor before adding the beans. They came out really nicely and held together surprisingly well!
These are super easy and delicious! To save time I threw the garlic cloves into the food processor with the oats and I used probably too many dried mushrooms because I didn’t want to measure, just threw in the spices without measuring too and barely rinsed the beans (a little water in the can after draining and re-drained) – delicious burgers that hold together really well. I will make this again and again!
These sliders look amazing! I want to make them for my 8-month-old, is it okay to use soy sauce, shouldn’t avoid sodium before the first year?
Yes, we’d recommend not including soy sauce in these if serving to your 8-month old.
If I use fresh mushrooms, how much does the recipe call for?
Hi Sandy, the dried mushrooms give extra umami flavor, which is why we used those. If using fresh, we’d recommend ~1 cup fresh chopped mushrooms, then cooking down until liquid is released and browned.