In a world where veggie burgers exist, who needs beef anymore?
While that sentiment is a bit of an exaggeration, it’s true that a good veggie burger can really whack that hamburger craving in a way most other fake meats would fail to. Lightlife enters the ring with their own take on the veggie burger with their Smart Patties Meatless Black Bean Burger.
We appreciate that these come wrapped two in a pack instead of four in a pack, because it’s easier to eat two at a time and keep the rest in the freezer until we’re ready for another meal.
However, these particular patties have a problem: they freeze together into a double-thick patty that has to be pried apart before cooking.
And trust us when we say that these things are relentlessly stuck together. We tried using a fork to pry them apart, and it wasn’t enough. So we grabbed a serrated knife and it still wasn’t enough. We then thawed them in the microwave for 30 seconds and went back to the knife, and even then we ended up working pretty hard to saw our mammoth patty into two normal-sized ones.
Now, these probably thawed a bit on our way home and froze together once we stuck them in the freezer, so that’s partially our fault. However, we feel like Lightlife should have taken that into consideration when they decided to package a pair of frozen veggie burgers together. A little bit of thawing on the way home from the grocery store isn’t unusual, especially in warmer climates. Packaging these individually would have really been a huge positive here.
Once we got all that sorted, we decided to cook one of these up in a pan with some olive oil and pepper, which tends to be our favorite method for cooking a veggie burger.
Because each patty is extremely juicy — which is the reason these things freeze together so easily — they tend to stick to the pan, even when there’s a nice coat of olive oil. There’s just no getting around it; these things take some work.
But the work is worth it, because these Lightlife burgers are loaded with flavor.
These don’t have that southwestern flavor that your typical black bean burger is known for. Instead, they have a delicious flame-broiled taste, with a hearty crisp to go along with it. Part of that, of course, comes from the fact that we cooked ours a little too long, but a large part of that is simply the natural flavor of the patties.
Don’t expect to find the consistency of real beef here. These patties are too crumbly and lack the gristle or the chewiness of real beef. They’re not dry, though, like some of the other veggie burgers out there.
The Lightlife Black Bean Burgers are more work than your typical veggie burgers, but they’re well worth it. The flavor here is exceptional. Plus, one of these patties goes extremely well with a slice of cheddar cheese and a sesame-seed bun.
To learn more about the ingredients or nutrition in these black bean burgers, check out our package scans below.
