WARNING: I am not a professional chef. I am not even an amateur chef. I don’t know what I’m doing. This recipe is provided more for entertainment purposes than as a dietary suggestion. If you decide to try it, don’t blame me… but feel free to leave a comment telling me all about your wonderful experience.

Over the weekend, I was thinking to myself, “how can I up the ante on food weirdness?” And then it came to me. I really enjoy cheeseburgers, but I can’t eat them anymore. The bun is what hurts me. I can eat them without a bun, but that would require me to make burgers on my own. If I were willing to do that on a whim, you wouldn’t be currently reading an article with “scrounger” in its title.

But what if I could make beans taste kind of like a stand-in cheeseburger, bun and all? That’s really stupid, but sometimes stuff can be effectively substituted for other stuff, like cauliflower instead of pizza crust or applesauce instead of vegetable oil or a screeching howler monkey in place of most of the 2016 GOP candidates. I didn’t throw in any meat to complete the dish, so it kind of turned into a vegetarian sort of thing, which maybe sort of defeats the idea of replicating the full taste of a cheeseburger, but whatever. Here it is, in all its glory:

Vegetarian Cheeseburger Beans

Total Carbs: ~17g*

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup great northern beans (16g carbs)
• 1/3 cup shredded cheddar cheese (<1g)
• 1 tbsp mayonnaise
• 1 tbsp reduced sugar ketchup (<1g)
• 1 tbsp mustard
• A dash of steak seasoning

Directions

Honestly, this “directions” section is just a formality. Put the beans and cheese into a bowl and heat them up for 1 minute (1200W; adjust as needed). Then put all the other condiments in there. As a word of note, the steak seasoning I used was Chicago Steak Seasoning, but really anything you can add that elicits the taste of a burger should be fine. You could even add relish if you’d like, but I didn’t have any, so I didn’t include it in the ingredients list. Gosh, I wanted to, though.

Stir it all up until it looks deceptively foreign.

Review

It’s actually weirdly good. Like, it’s kind of sweet in a way – perhaps due to a combination of the ketchup and beans – but it doesn’t make it bad. I actually might make this again sometime. Probably not when Ferny is around, though. Some people just can’t appreciate my genius cookery (or would that be kookery?).

Surprisingly, despite the cold condiments, it stays warm for a while, too. It probably sat on the table for a few minutes before I actually started eating it and it was still fine. Wait, is that something people talk about when reviewing food? I have no idea.

Lastly, to answer the question you’ve all been pondering: does it taste like a cheeseburger bun? No, of course not. It tastes like beans with cheese and condiments. Were you really expecting anything different?

It’s still good, though.

* The given carb count is only an estimation. Please remember to always check your labels! Carb counts can vary between brands, even for the same type of food.