Black Bean Burgers

Sooo easy to make these Black Bean Burgers and all you need to do is add your favourite clean condiments.

Some Cleaner Condiments To Liven Up Any Burger

I have also Included what ingredients to look for (and a few to avoid) along with some brand names. You’re Welcome 🙂

Mustard

Ingredients: vinegar, mustard seed, maybe garlic or turmeric.

Brand: Kozlik’s

Hot Sauce

Ingredients: vinegar, some spices, and hot peppers. Nice way to add some spice.

Brand: Tabasco has three ingredients and only 35mg of sodium per serving. If you want to go organic, Arizona Pepper’s Organic Harvest foods is a good brand, but the sodium is 150mg per serving. This can easily be diluted, though.

Tahini

Ingredients: It’s just sesame seeds. Unhulled is optimal since it’s less processed. And this is an easy one to make at home.

Just toast sesame seeds in a large stainless steel pan on medium a pan, until they are golden brown. Stir constantly to ensure they don’t burn and toast evenly. Once toasted, remove from heat and let cool. Then toss the toasted seeds in a food processer and blend for 5-7 mins.

Be patient with this and keep scraping down the sides as needed. It will go from crumbly to smooth and if your processer is not powerful enough, you made need to add a little neutral oil, like avocado, to help it along. When making this from scratch, I like to toast the seeds to bring out the flavour.

Relish

Ingredients: This is really hard to find a clean brand. Most are overflowing in sugar and those with low sugar are packed with artificial sweeteners. Replace this with another clean condiment—maybe try a new one from this list.

Hummus

Making hummus is super easy and here’s a Roasted Red Pepper Hummus recipe if you want to try to make your own.

Ingredients: It’s made with chickpeas, tahini, oil, lemon juice, salt, vinegar, and garlic. Otherwise, look for these ingredients in the labels.  Sea salt, olive oil or avocado oil—even better only with the tahini as its oil, and preferably apple cider vinegar but not a deal breaker. The oil is a deal breaker, though…so steer away from soybean & canola oils and sodium under 140mg per serving.  And any ingredients you can’t pronounce or don’t recognize.

Brand: Hope

Kimchi

This is traditionally a Korean side dish staple.

Ingredients: fermented and salt cured veggies like Napa cabbage, radishes or cucumber. Kimchi can have a wide variety of seasonings used like garlic, ginger, spring onions so as long as they are real ingredients you are good to go except sodium can be high. So please see Sauerkraut below for tips on sodium. The same principles there should be applied here if you have any issues with sodium.

Look for in the refrigerated health section of your local grocery store.

Pico de galo

Ingredients: tomatoes, onions, and jalapeno peppers with lime or lemon and spices and cilantro or parsley. Put it on chicken, fish or on top of soups with Buddha bowls

Salsa

Ingredients: Tomatoes, onions and spices- look for low sodium and no added or very minimum added sugar when buying.

Brand: Two decent brands that taste good and use real ingredients are Newman’s Own Salsa and On the Border Salsa. Keep in mind, though, 2 TBSP is a serving.  And if you plan to have more the sodium can add up!

Trick of the Trade Tip

So, what I like to do is have a RTE jar in my pantry for those times when I can’t make my own or just want to save time. Then I add some fresh chopped tomatoes, extra lime, cilantro/parsley/basil and a little more garlic.

This way you can have the fresh flavour, enjoy more of it, and not have to worry about the sodium going up.  Win win!

If you want to make it from scratch, though, try my Fresh Salsa recipe here.

Sauerkraut

Ingredients: cabbage, water, sea salt, lactic acid for fermentation process. Most fermented veggies are salt-cured foods, so if sodium is an issue for you please be mindful and keep the serving to 1-2 tbsps.

And 1-2 tbsps  is enough to enjoy this as a condiment and reap the gut health benefits. Otherwise, rinse well if having more.

Brand: Eden’s, Gold mine organic raw sauerkraut. Always buy it from a glass jar and in the cold section.

Pesto

Easy to make – and here’s for my pesto recipe if you want to give it a go or these brands are good. Organico, Biona Organic.

Main ingredients, olive oil, nuts or seeds, garlic, and herbs (basil/cilantro/parsley). For dairy free you can add Nutritional Yeast.

Low-sodium, gluten-free soy sauce

Regular soy sauces are high in sodium and wheat is used as a filler. Tamari is fermented soy sauce.

Ingredients: Look for min ingredients and fermented non-GMO soy.

Note, though, low-sodium is 25% reduced from the brands regular product. They are not sodium-free and still can be high so read the label and use in small amounts.

Brands: Bragg’s are fermented soy sauces and contain min ingredients and use non-GMO soy.  San- J is a great brand and look for gluten-free.

Raw coconut aminos

Is a good soy free low sodium option for soy sauce.

Brands- Coconut Secret and Kevala are clean.

For a soy sauce alternative recipe check out this link below.

https://wellnessmama.com/37262/soy-sauce-alternative

Teriyaki sauce

Brands: Try Coconut aminos by Coconut Secret – their teriyaki sauce is soy low in sodium.

Guacamole

Huge fan of this! And super easy to make yourself….if you want to give that a whirl check out my quac here. The ingredients are avocado, vinegar, lime, garlic and fresh cilantro or parsley. Option to put a dash of hot sauce and use balsamic vinegar.

Worcestershire sauce

Brand: Lea & Perrins brand doesn’t contain any gluten or wheat and the sodium-reduced version has only 45 mg per serving.

Ketchup

Ingredients: Concentrated tomato paste, balsamic or apple cider vinegar, garlic powder, onion powder, sea salt, stevia for nature sweetener or a little natural sugar. Avoid high-fructose corn syrup!!

This can be a tough to find one that is low sugar and low sodium, and again, very easy to make yourself using the ingredients above.

Brand: French’s makes a sugar free one. It’s sweetened with stevia which is a herb that is naturally very sweet.  Some find stevia has an after taste. It has 120mg of sodium per serving.

Homemade Greek Yogurt and Herb Dip

This one is so easy to make yourself and uses only a few ingredients.

Check out my recipe here. 

Get creative too with bun alternatives.  I love using grilled portobello mushrooms and even used Sweet Potato Cakes…both are amazing!! What’s your fav?

Enjoy these simple Black Bean Burgers!