I don’t know about you, but when I first started trying to make vegetarian burgers at home—I ended up with a mushy mess! Sure, they’d TASTE good ( I always say: all the flavour in a dish comes from the plants anyhow) but it was a little hard to tell the burger from the bun in my mouth texture-wise! And, little known fact (but widely understood preference) texture is a BIG part of food experience.
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Enter Beyond Meat Burgers (and Linda McCartney burgers before them)! Both are EXCELLENT textural subs for a meaty burger craving, BUT both are macro-identical to a traditional burger (meaning they have the same amount of fat, protein and fibre), Beyond Meat is more expensive than a traditional beef burger (what is with that anyways) and Linda McCartney isn’t even available in North America (le sigh).
So what’s a frugal-thinking, home-cooking, health-loving, burger-craving person with a penchants for a meaty, springy, chewy, mouth-watering veggie-bite of a hamburger to DO?
Enter my recipe for a high protein, meaty-chewy veggie burger with way more fibre, less fat, more flavour and way more micro-nutrients than any of these other options.
My vegetarian burgers:
-Stay perfectly packed together
-Are umami-rich, satisfying that elusive meat-taste we crave
-Are chewy ie. meaty to bite
-Are EASY to make
-Are SUPER cheap to buy
-Contain lots and lots of protein
-Bring the ‘wow’ taste to a totally vegan dish
-Will satisfy even the meatiest-loving carnivores at your table
I used to cook professionally at a pretty high level in my teens (it’s how I travelled all over the world very young), my culinary obsession turned to really simple, fresh and healthy food after I retired my chefs-coat.
My recipe is also SIMPLE, with few ingredients, and EASY for anyone to do (because who wants to go to the grocery store with a 45 item list—30 of which you’ve never heard of before and surely won’t ever use again—just to make a damn burger?? Not me)!
All you need is:
- 3 parts Textured Vegetable Protein (TVP)
- 1-2 parts Vegetable(s) of your choice
- 1 part Red Lentils
- Soy Sauce/Liquid Aminos of your choice
- Coconut or avocado oil
- Something fermented (I like sauerkraut)
- Stock cube/powder/paste of your Choice (optional, but recommended)
- liquid smoke is also optional if you have it around, I do like it for many healthy recipes so I always have some in my cupboard, but if you don’t—fo’get about it.
- another option is to add your fave spice mix (like curry) to venture out a bit. I like these plain because of all the dressings you can add to the burger bun, but if you find yourself so addicted to this recipe you’re eating it 3x a week—you might want to spice it up at intervals!
The best part about this veggie burger recipe is: you can actually make it out of leftovers too.
You have some veggies sitting in the fridge about to go off? Throw them into these burgers! Don’t you love it when a recipe ticks all the boxes of being healthy, easy, cheap, adaptable AND delicious? SO. DO. I.
- Soak lentils for at least an hour. A few hours is preferred. Overnight is acceptable (but no more than that). The longer you soak, the less liquid you will need in the next step.
- When you’re ready to move onto the next step, preheat the over to 350 degrees if you’re cooking them right away (they freeze well raw, on a sheet pan, and can be stacked into bags after frozen—see video).
- Dose your TVP with a mixture of highly concentrated stock (so a little less water-to-stock concentration than you’d usually use for soup etc.) and soya sauce. You want the texture to not be totally saturated, but dosed with plenty of flavour (so there should be some crunch in the TVP still).
- Place chopped veggies and lentils in a food processor or blender. Blend to smooth. A few whole lentils are fine—they’ll actually add crunch!—but you will want to really blend down the veg. You may want to salt/pepper this mix (I always season in layers, so I’ll add a wee dash to the mix) but it depends how stock-y you made your TVP. You may need to add a bit of water if you only soaked your lentils quickly, or you may want to drain them out completely if they soaked overnight. The texture of these burgers depend largely on the water content in the batter—which is a bit of a dance between the ingredients you use (especially considering the water content of the vegetable you chose) and length of time the lentils were soaked. If you’re unsure, err on the side of drier and test-bake a small bit (gosh, you could probably even microwave it if you’re really hungry). It will turn more lentil cake-y with more water and can even get damn right TOUGH with too little. You can always add more water easily, and even modify with more (dry) TVP if it’s too wet.
- Pour the lentil batter into the TVP and mix! Make patties and bake (or freeze) and voila! Its burger time!