15-16 ounces of cooked, drained, and rinsed garbanzo beans, black beans, or a combination of both (see note at the bottom)
1 medium carrot, grated
½ cup cooked greens — spinach or kale both work well, OR you can use thawed frozen spinach- just be sure to squeeze allll the water out
½ cup grated Colby jack cheese (or whatever your preference)
2 tablespoons BBQ sauce (I used Sweet Baby Ray’s Sweet & Spicy)
1 teaspoon honey
¼ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon paprika
a dash of onion powder
3 tablespoons whole wheat flour
More cheese, lettuce, tomato, red onion, and BBQ sauce for topping the finished sliders
8 whole wheat dinner rolls
Instructions
Place the red onion, olive oil, butter, and kosher salt in a small saute pan over medium heat. Caramelize the onion, stirring it around in the butter and oil occasionally. This should only take a few minutes.
Put the beans in a large bowl and start smashing them with the back of a fork. You could use a food processor.
Add the grated carrots, greens, and cheese.
Add the onions, BBQ sauce, honey, pepper, paprika, and onion powder.
Keep using the fork to combine all the ingredients evenly. Then mix in the flour.
Form the mixture into 8 equal-sized patties.
Refrigerate them for 30 minutes (this just makes them easier to handle- it’s not completely necessary).
Heat a large skillet on medium high. Coat with just a dab of oil or non-stick cooking spray and add the patties just a few at a time so you have room to flip them (they will be a little bit soft; I like to cook 3 at a time so that there is room for my spatula in the skillet).
Cook them for about 3 minutes on each side – you’re just browning them and trying to heat them through.
Slice the whole wheat dinner rolls in half, burger-bun-style. Drizzle a little more BBQ sauce onto the bottom half of each mini bun, Place the cooked veggie sliders on top of the BBQ sauce. Then top them with cheese while they’re still HOT! so it will melt.
Stack each slider with lettuce, tomato, and red onion slices, finishing with the top half of the bun. You can hold them together using frill picks if you’d like.
Notes
To make 8 regular sized burgers or 16 sliders, use 1 (15 ounce) can of garbanzo beans (chick peas) and 1 (15 ounce) can of black beans, and then double the rest of the ingredients. You could use all of one kind or the other, but the combination of the two beans was great for flavor AND color. If you aren’t doubling the recipe, you could certainly still use half of each can and save the rest of the beans for another dish OR you could do like I do (if you either plan ahead or have a bit of extra time) and soak & prepare dried beans — I just measure them by scooping them out of the big pot with my liquid measuring cup. All beans do need to be drained and rinsed, of course. Even those you cook yourself.**
Recipe by Sugar Dish Me at https://www.sugardishme.com/cheesy-bbq-veggie-sliders/