1-Start by slicing the onion, chopping the garlic, cutting the eggplant into little cubes and chopping the mushrooms.

2- Place the onion and the garlic in a frying pan with 4 tablespoons of olive oil and a pinch of black pepper and sauté until the onion is golden brown. The heat should be medium / high and you should stir occasionally to prevent the onion and the garlic from burning. Add more olive oil if you think necessary.

3- Add the mushrooms, the eggplant, 3 tablespoons of liquid smoke, 3 teaspoons of smoked paprika, 1 teaspoon of salt and cayenne pepper to taste. Stir occasionally for about 5 minutes, or until you see that the eggplant and mushrooms are very tender and that they have reduced in volume considerably (about half of the initial volume).

4- Put everything in a large bowl, so that you can add the remaining ingredients and knead with your hands. Now add the beans, the rice, the oats, chopped olives, toasted sesame seeds and BBQ sauce and knead everything with your hands, until you create a kind of paste that can be shaped. If your beans are not well cooked, it may be necessary to take the mixture to a food processor, but do not overprocess it, as you do not want the burgers to be without texture and become some kind of hummus. Taste the mixture and adjust seasonings.

5- Take the mixture to the fridge for at least 1 hour, or until it is completely cold. This is super important, because during this cooling period, the mixture will become firmer and more cohesive, therefore easier to shape up the burgers.

6- Shape up the burgers with the help of a round metal ring, those used to cut mini cakes, placing the mixture inside the ring and pressing with the help of a spoon or with your hands. You can do this shape up process using only your hands, but it will take a little bit more time.

7- You can cook the burgers right away, but it is preferable to freeze and do it one day after, this way you get a more cohesive result and avoid a catastrophic final result when frying.

8-To cook, remove the burgers from the freezer and take them directly to a previously heated frying pan with a generous drizzle of toasted sesame oil. Let it cook on one side for about 3 minutes or until you see that a golden crust is beginning to form. Then turn on the other side and let it cook for another 3 to 4 minutes. This process may vary a little from stove to stove, so you should make sure that the burgers do not burn.

9- You can enjoy the burgers by themselves with rice, french fries, or any other way you like or you can follow the suggestion and assemble a delicious burger on the bread. In this case you just need to caramelize an onion, well caramelized, until it is almost passing to the burnt. Then cut a red cabbage very thinly, season with rice vinegar and massage the cabbage for about 2 minutes to turn it more tender. Cut an eggplant into slices, season with salt, pepper and lemon juice, and take it to a frying pan with a drizzle of olive oil to make it tender and juicy. Cut the cucumber pickles into thin slices. To assemble the burger, first open the bread in half, add a first layer of lettuce and canonigos, then the eggplant, then the caramelized onion, the burger, a slice of cheese, BBQ sauce, the pickles and finally the red cabbage.

10- Serve, ALWAYS, with french fries. 🙂