Vegetarian Burgers

The moment you've all been waiting for has finally arrived. You may now read a step-by-step pictorial instructive digi-manual on how to make vegetarian burgers that are not rubbery-bendable, highly processed, full-of-nothing-whole, weird-tasting, headache-inducing, perfectly extruded little cylinders. No, these are real burgers. Messy, delicious patties of summertime. Only without the flesh.

I must apologize that they're not vegan. But only a little, because I quite enjoy them as they are. I'm sure if you're vegan you can think of some way to veganify these burgers. Or come up with your own. Or keep eating frozen boxed products that resemble food in no good way. Or skip the burgers altogether.

These are relatively easy to make, especially if you have a food processor. If not, you just have to work a little harder. And for some reason, like yogurt and vegetable stock, vegetarian burgers are one of those foods that people just don't seem to want to make themselves. They'll bake themselves a fancy cake, or make a batch of cookies requiring specific temperatures, carefully measured ingredients, and perfectly spaced plops of dough on a lined sheet - but they won't throw together a few comestibles to make a burger. Why is that? I honestly have no idea. Frozen "veggie" burgers from a box taste disgusting. And call me persnickety, but I don't want soy protein concentrate, modified vegetable gum, or wheat gluten (in its most naked form) tainting my food with its indeterminate origins (or destination, for that matter). My philosophy is that if you can't make an ingredient relatively easily in your kitchen from its whole source, it probably doesn't belong in your diet (key word = "probably" - there are exceptions).

Now. I'm not on a high horse, I understand people have time limits, and budgetary considerations, but in all honesty - these don't take that long to put together and they're cheaper than buying them premade, and they are so many times better. You can also form them, freeze them, and save them for later. Maybe you could even make some kind of a meatless loaf, but I've never tried it.

A little tip for making vegetarian burgers: use lots of mushrooms. These provide juiciness, the natural glutamate flavor (also found in beef), brown color, iron, potassium, and some B vitamins as well. As for the other ingredients - onions and garlic because they're awesome and should go in almost everything, bread crumbs to absorb moisture, ground nuts for some good extra fat and to simulate those crispy bits that are on the outside of a beef burger, eggs to both hold it together (when they cook, they grab and hold) and provide some B-12 and protein and whole fat, quinoa for a complete plant protein, black beans for more plant protein and good fiber and folic acid and iron (and flavor!), cheese for some melty delicious fat, nutritional yeast for your dose of vitamins (and a good flavor), salt and pepper and Worcestershire sauce for seasoning. It may seem like a lot of fat, but one of these burgers has half the fat and barely more than half the cholesterol (and a lot more of the vitamins and minerals, except B-12) than a beef burger of the same size. So there you go. It's healthy to boot.


VEGETARIAN BURGERS

3/4 cup nuts (any soft or fatty nut will do - I used peanuts, but walnuts and pecans work really well too)
1/2 cup bread crumbs
3/4 lb mushrooms - cremini or button (creminis are great, unless they're more expensive)
1 cup cooked black beans, drained
1 cup cooked quinoa, drained and pressed dry if very moist
1-2 tbsp cooking oil
1/2 cup diced onion
3ish cloves of garlic, pressed
~1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce (check ingredients for vegetarianism - many brands have anchovies)
sea salt
freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup shredded swiss, provolone, or mozarella cheese
1 tbsp nutritional yeast
2 eggs

1. Your first step is to make use of your food processor. I like processing in the following order: first nuts, then bread, then mushrooms, then quinoa/black beans. That way, you don't have to wash the food processor in between. For the nuts, process until they're pretty fine and crumbly, but do be aware that when processed past a certain point, they become nut butter. That's all fine and good, and I'm sure it wouldn't hurt the recipe too much, but it's not what we're going for. Set them aside when they're processed, and toss into the empty processor some stale artisan bread. Break it into chunks first. Let it whir away for a few minutes until you get crumbs. If you already have bread in crumb form, you can use that. If it came from a box or a can, I wouldn't trust it. But that's just me. So set your crumbs aside and put in your mushrooms. Pulse it until the mushrooms just look like itty bitty pieces but aren't quite yet a mushroom paste. Like this:

If the pieces are too big, they won't stick together as well. And they won't cook as fast. So take out the mushrooms and set them aside, and chuck in the black beans and quinoa together. Just pulse until the beans get sufficiently mushed up. The quinoa is somewhat immune to the blade, which is fine.



2. Heat up a medium-sized steel or stainless steel pan over medium heat with some oil. When it's hot (put your hand over it, you should feel a good amount of heat but not see any smoking), put in the onions. Cook them for a few minutes, stirring them around a bit every so often. When they are translucent and starting to brown, dump in the ground up mushrooms, and the garlic, and stir to get it mixed. In a minute or so, the mushrooms will release a whole bunch of mushroom juice.



This is delightful. Just let it do that. Stir it every so often. The water will evaporate and you'll get a more concentrated flavor in the pan. Once all the liquid is out, and the mixture inside the pan is formable, stir in the Worcestershire, take it off the heat, and transfer it to a bowl (if it stays in the pan, it might start to stick). Season the mushroom mix with salt and pepper.



3. Right away, stir in the cheese of your choice. Usually I use Swiss, but I had Provolone on hand this time and it worked better than I expected. It was adhesive and gooey and stringy. I was enchanted, actually. Once it's all melted, stir the mushroom mix with the bean mix in a bowl. Add the nuts, bread crumbs, and nutritional yeast and combine everything. Taste for seasoning and adjust with salt and pepper as necessary. Once you are satisfied, add the eggs. Just crack them right into the bowl and mix it all up until the eggs disappear and the contents of the bowl look wetter than before.



This is your burger mix. It'll make about eight. Or however many you want.

4. You can cook these in whichever way strikes your fancy. I like them best grilled, but as luck would have it, I don't have a grill. Some people like to broil them. I don't like to because then I have to bend over and put things in the oven. So I cook them on the stovetop in my delightful cast iron pan. In any case, it's good to toast your bun first. If you have the option, get a really attractive bun from some neat local bakery. I didn't want to scour the local bakeries, and the Whole Foods here has a very meager selection of fresh baked goods (all their own, as they don't seem to be into supporting the local economy), so I went with Rudi's whole wheat buns. (I could have made some, I guess, but that takes hours and is a somewhat touchy process.)

A side note - Rudi's has changed its label/packaging, and its products (although the press release on their website talks only of the new packaging). Whatever happened to product integrity? I got some of the pre-change whole wheat buns, and compared the ingredients to the whole wheat buns in the new packaging - totally different. In addition, the new ones have more calories, more sugar, more sodium, more carbohydrates, less fiber, less protein, and a much lower vitamin and mineral content. Uhhh... thanks, Rudi's. BTW, your new packaging is ugly.

Back on track. Toast the buns.



6. You should probably ready your condiments at this time as well so your burger doesn't sit around getting cold while you slice tomatoes. I like (from bottom to top): bun, dill pickle (or relish), lettuce, avocado, tomato, burger, completely melted cheddar cheese, fresh thinly sliced onion, ketchup, and mayo on the top bun. Unfortunately, I didn't have any lettuce and had to use kale. No biggie. And I messed up the order of the bottom ingredients. But it wasn't too bad.

Anyway, you should cook your burger. It's important that your pan or grill or broiler or whatever is not too hot. I mean, it should be hot, but not super hot. This is a dense burger with a lot of moisture - you don't have to worry too much about drying it out, but you do have to worry about cooking it through (it does have egg, after all, and it will fall apart if it's not cooked enough). If your heat is too high, the sides will burn before it cooks to the middle. But don't worry too much. Just scoop out a bit of burger mix, form a patty (make sure it's not too thick or it will never cook through), and put it on.



And flip it when it's brown and halfway cooked.



If you're using cheese, stick it on top of the browned side right now. It should be thinly sliced for maximum meltage.



I like to cover the pan with a large lid for a minute or so while the cheese melts. Do take the lid off to finish cooking the burger, though, as some moisture has to evaporate. It should be melty. And brown on both sides, and cooked all the way through.



And now... you can put it together in whatever order you want, with whatever condiments you want (the more adornments, the better). But it should look more or less like this:



and taste somewhat like a summer barbecue party.

I suggest that you make some vegetarian burgers of your own. Change the ingredients a little, if you'd like, there's no right or wrong. They're extremely satisfying. And gratifying. Maybe a touch mystifying, but only if you haven't made them yourself.