Black Bean Cakes with Fried Eggs and Avocado Crema Recipe
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Black bean cakes packed with hot sauce and herbs give this dish a Mexican touch. Make everything except the fried eggs in advance and just reheat, assemble, and serve for your next brunch.
What to buy: Dried beans can be substituted for the canned beans if you prefer. Use 1 1/2 cups cooked beans for each 15-ounce can of beans called for.
Game plan: The avocado crema can be made a couple of hours ahead; just cover tightly and refrigerate until ready to serve.
The black bean cakes can be made up to 1 day in advance, cooled, covered, and refrigerated. To reheat, place on a baking sheet and warm in a 375°F oven for 15 minutes.
We prefer to serve the black bean cakes with fried eggs—the crispy edges of the eggs nicely complement the soft texture of the cakes. But poached eggs work well, too.
This recipe was featured as part of our Cooking with Winter Ingredients photo gallery.
For the black bean cakes:
- 1/4 cup finely ground yellow cornmeal
- 2 (15-ounce) cans black beans, drained and rinsed
- 2 medium garlic cloves, finely chopped
- 1 large egg
- 1/2 cup plain breadcrumbs
- 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped
- 1/2 cup white onion, finely chopped
- 4 teaspoons hot sauce
- 1 tablespoon kosher salt
- 1/4 cup canola or vegetable oil
For the avocado crema:
- 1 medium avocado, cut in half lengthwise, peel and pit removed
- 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, coarsely chopped
- 1/4 cup sour cream
- 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
To assemble:
- 6 fried eggs
- Heat the oven to 300°F and arrange a rack in the middle. Place cornmeal in a shallow dish and set aside.
- Place beans, garlic, egg, breadcrumbs, cilantro, onion, hot sauce, and salt in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a blade attachment. Pulse until ingredients are incorporated and beans are broken down but some whole beans remain, about 15 pulses. Stop the processor and scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula during processing.
- Form 6 (3-inch) patties and dust each patty on both sides with cornmeal. Place on a baking sheet.
- Heat oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat until shimmering, about 2 minutes. Place 3 patties in the pan and fry until golden, about 3 to 5 minutes. Flip and repeat on the second side. Return patties to the baking sheet and place in the oven to keep warm. Repeat with remaining patties.
For the avocado crema:
- Place all ingredients in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a blade attachment and process until smooth. Season with salt.
To assemble:
- Place bean cakes on serving plates. Top each with a fried egg and 2 tablespoons of the crema.
The egg in the photo looks pretty damned poached to me, but you gotta love them winter avocados!
I agree avocado isn;t really a good ingredient for this recipe.,
Nancee J. Swartz
Why didn't I read the comments before I made this!!! I actually did halve the salt, since a tablespoon seemed like way too much. I found it still way too salty. Also, I think these would be better if you flatten them quite a bit. Mine were very thick, and it was quite a mouthful. Still, I'm pretty happy about this recipes. It's something different, and it is definitely a good blend of flavors.
I love the idea behind this recipe & putting it in your feature "cooking with cold weather ingredients"...but avocado isn't really a winter ingredient for most of the U.S.
that thing is gross
hi, everyone. just to clarify re:the salt, we use Diamond Crystal brand kosher salt here in the CHOW test kitchen. Diamond brand tends to be 1/2 as salty as standard (ie Morton's) table salt, so please adjust accordingly. thanks!
aida
This recipe turned out perfect -- but, thanks to everyone's admonitions about the amount of salt, I too toned it down. I started out with just under a half-pound of dried beans, i.e. with no added salt, and only used 2 tsp, which was an an optimal amount. The avocado crema was a bit too sour on its own, but it paired very nicely with the bean cakes. An excellent dish when company's over for Sunday brunch.
I made this to the letter and it was inedible. I am a salt lover but this was way too salty! Also the black bean mixture was too loose to actually make cakes. I give it a HUGE thumbs down. What a waste of my time.
I would want to try this with one substitution, instead of breadcrumbs, crumbed corn tortillas, and of course the salt reduction.
mwk: I would think that 2 15oz cans of beans would be right at half a pound of dried beans equivalent. A pound of dried beans generally yields 5-6 cups of cooked beans, and a drained can of beans is about 1.25 - 1.5 cups.
I use avacado creme like that all the time. It is great with many sandwiches and burgers. I will try the beans this weekend for breakfast but I also think way way too much salt. I will use 1 teaspoon maybe a bit more. Looks great. I have a similar recipes for bean cakes but this looks easier and looking forward to trying it.
And yes, the egg is perfection
Hi,
I usually like to cook beans myself. Is 2-15oz cans about the equivalent of 1 pound of dried beans?
I am new to Chowhound so I am posting this a few months after the request for a binding alternative for eggs, (kayex)
Try ground flax seeds hydrated with water. My sister is allergic to eggs and I often substitute them in cookies and cakes for her. They work pretty good. They are loaded with omega 3's too!
Hope this helps.
is "finely ground cornmeal" the same as polenta or instant polenta?
The crema was a home run, as was the overall combo of flavors, but the beancakes weren't cohesive enough. Normally I'd add another egg, but don't want eggy overload here. I'll try cdnexpat's cornstarch suggestion.
You know, most canned beans and hot sauces are loaded with salt..the recipe has just too muc. I used one TSP and put the shaker on the table. no one touched it
But with the reduced salt, this was killer! I used crushed tortilla chips (more salt!) instead of breadcrumbs, nonfat yogure instead of sour cream (it was what I had), added a tablespoon of tupelo honey to the avocado crema, and served them on toasted sopas.
Way too much salt! I used 2.5 tsps, and it was still too much. Next time I will use 1 tsp or less. Otherwise I liked the recipe.
OMG... this Sunday. It's going down. Looks amazing.
To replace the egg, you could try Ener-G Egg replacer (not sure what they have in it, though); or you could try 2 tbsp cornstarch for one egg. One of the things when doing substitutions is mouth feel. I was a vegan for 5 years and realised that the element that made me most satisfied was texture. Try adding some medium- coarsely chopped nuts to the black bean cake mix before coating them in cornmeal and frying them.
I made this with considerably less salt probably 1 teaspoon if that as I used a blend of my favorite hot sauces (Sriracha, garlic chili paste, scotchbonnet sauce and Tabasco) which pack flavor punch. It was great. I want to pass this recipe on to my cousin as he is vegetarian and eats Ital foods only. Does anyone have a recommendation for how to remove the egg and use something else as the binder?
great! you could even eat the black bean patty as a veggie burger on a roll with avocados and spouts.
tried the recipe this weekend. even with Kosher salt this was way too much salt. I want to try it again as the textures were nice, but I'm only going to try 1t. 4 just kills the taste.
kosher salt's crystals are arranged differently such that it is less densely packed than table salt I believe.
I made this for dinner tonight. It was really tasty, but I recommend cutting back the salt to 2-tsp and adjusting from there, according to taste.
Perhaps I'm imagining things, but I've noticed it takes quite a bit more coarse salt like kosher to get the same lever of saltiness in a smaller amount of fine salt. Perhaps because coarse salt tends to be less packed?
Ha ha, I was thinking the same thing about the egg!
that's a beautifully cooked egg, by the way!
sounds like a lot of salt--does it really need this much, with the precooked (salted) beans and hot sauce?
Sounds very good though. Will try with some pinquitos I just cooked.