Vegan Burger

‘Can you recommend a good vegan burger recipe?’ I’ve had this question so many times, it seemed time to put one up on the blog. This is a yummy, infinitely variable recipe that changes every time I make it, so feel free to experiment.

The basic burger ingredients:

• protein (nuts and/or beans and/or tofu…)
• starch (breadcrumbs or gluten-free crumbs or cooked quinoa or rice…)
• flavour (any or all of: onion, celery, carrot, apple, herbs, spices, stock, salt and pepper)
• something to hold it all together (eg egg replacer or tahini or flaxseed meal or stock). 

• 1 onion
• 1 stick celery
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 carrots
• 1 can kidney beans
• 1  1/2 cups wholemeal breadcrumbs
• 2 cups almonds
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons ground coriander
• 1 teaspoon salt
• black pepper to taste
• egg replacer to equal 2 eggs (I used No-Egg) 

Method

1. Finely chop the onion and celery and fry gently in the oil until translucent. Remove and place in a large bowl
2. Grate the carrots by hand, or coarsely chop them and add to your food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Add to the bowl. 
3. Coarsely mash the kidney beans by hand, so that some look smushed up and some are relatively whole, or pulse in the processor to the same consistency. Add to the bowl. 
4. Finely chop the bread into crumbs, or pulse in the processor. Add to the bowl. 
5. Finely chop the almonds. Add to the bowl. 
6. Add the cumin, coriander, salt and pepper to all the other ingredients and stir well. 
7. Make up your liquid ingredients. For this one I used egg replacer which was 2 teaspoons No-Egg and 2 tablespoons water whisked until fluffy. 
8. Mix the wet and dry ingredients and work the mixture well, with your hands preferably, until quite squidgy and it clumps together easily. 
9. Form into burger shapes with your hands and press firmly into shape. Don’t make them too small, or they will fall apart when cooking. You can keep them in the fridge for a few days like this. They also freeze well.
10. 
11. Fry in a hot pan on one side for about 3-4 minutes until the underside is brown and crispy, then turn and do the other side. I usually use the back of a metal spatula to press down on the top of the burger so that it spreads out a little bit in the pan. But be careful not to press too hard or it will fall apart.
12. When both sides are done, turn down and cook a bit more to make sure the burger is heated all the way through. Or you could sear the outside, then transfer to an oven to cook through and keep warm until you need them. If you want to barbecue these burgers, they should work fine as long as you don’t move them around too much.