Tasty Kidney Bean/Meatloaf Bites

Oh, beans! How I missed you so!

Along with roasted veggies for last night's dinner I made up a batch of these bite-sized bits of bean burgers. I first made them in regular muffin tin size after I read a holiday dinner post on the Engine 2 site using Jeff Novick's burger recipe, and it's been mentioned a number of other times since on various blogs and forums. In fact, the very first time I read about such a thing it was made with a regular old ground beef meatloaf recipe decades ago, so making these tiny little "meat" patties isn't a novel idea. Making them in tins is much easier than making it in loaf shape - no worries about trying to cut into a non-solid mass of cooked mush.

For this time around, I used this recipe posted to the Forks over Knives blog:


Kidney Bean Bites
Makes 8
From Happy Herbivore Light & Lean

• 1 15-ounce can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 tablespoon onion powder
• 1 tablespoon garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon Italian seasoning
• 1 tablespoon chili powder (add another 1 teaspoon if you like it spicy)
• 3 tablespoons ketchup
• 2 tablespoons mustard
• 1 tablespoon Vegan Worcestershire Sauce (recipe follows)
• 1 cup frozen mixed vegetables, thawed
• 6 tablespoons instant oats

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line a muffin tin with paper liners or use nonstick. Mash beans in a bowl with fork or potato masher until well mashed. Add remaining ingredients, except oats, and stir to combine.

Stir in oats. Spoon into muffin tin and pack down. Bake for 20 minutes until crisp on the outside and fairly firm to the touch (firms a bit as it cools). Serve with ketchup or a topping of your choice.

The only ingredient done differently was the veggies - I had leftover peas and carrots and leftover corn, so just mixed those together. Next time I may just use the peas and carrots by themselves, as the corn gets a little too crunchy after being baked.

I used my mini-muffin pan for these to keep them bite-sided:

I used my little cookie scoop to move them from the mixing bowl into the pan, and it made 21 little bites. I just had to take that odd one out of its misery and eat it before dinner. It was yummy, as sneaked food usually is. :)

And here they are out of the oven, cooling on a sheet of parchment. I made them a few hours before dinner was to be served because I needed the oven to make the roasted veggies, so after cooking put them on the paper on a flat tray. Just before serving dinner I popped them back into the oven for 5 minutes and they were nicely warmed and a little bit crispy. 

Perfect finger food to go along with the other finger food for dinner - roasted Yukon Gold potatoes and baby carrots. Alright, we did need a fork for the mixed greens, so not all finger foods. I had to warn my husband not to hold them tightly, because unlike little bites made from a seitan recipe, being beans these are softer and do crumble.

As I mentioned above, if I do make this recipe again I'll use just the peas and carrots, but most likely I'll skip this one and go back to Jeff's burgers because they're firmer and just serve more veggies on the side.