Relish your Bun with 4th of July Veggie Burgers!

Bean Cake Combo Burger

As promised, here are some of my favorite veggie & bean burgers for your holiday cookouts. All are low-fat and vegan. Some hold together better for grilling and others require the Funderburke Two Spatula method. We'll start with my new favorite, the Bean Cake Combo Burger


Bean Cake Combo Burger
Ingredients:
2 cups cooked Kidney Beans
2 cups some other type cooked Beans
1 cup old fashioned oats or Barley, uncooked
1 cup cooked brown rice, quinoa, sweet potato or mixture of starches.
1 cup of cooked mixed veggies, I used frozen corn, peas, & carrots in this case
4 T. sauce such as BBQ, Tomato, or Salsa
Seasoning to taste such as Frontier's line of salt free: Blackened Creole, Bombay Veggie, Pizza Flavor, Mexican, etc. depending on what flavor you wish to add, should go along with the sauce product you select.
Method:
1. Mash 1/2 of the Beans with a potato masher or pulse gently in Food Processor
2. Add oats, rice or quinoa and pulse a bit more.
3. Add additional beans and all other ingredients and pulse until just incorporated, do not OVER PROCESS!
4. Form into burgers using molds or form into equally sized patties. I use lids from 1 qt. glass Mason jars for most of my patty molding, they work great! Just be sure you push the mixture into the lid and really pack it in there. OR you can make a ball with the mixture, then form the packed ball into a patty.
5. Cook on a non-stick grill pan or on outdoor grill over med-high heat for a couple minutes each side. Using a lid can really help cook these patties all the way through.

Using Mason jar lids for the molds. These were once lids for some Rose-hips Jam :-)

Here I have used Black Beans and Beets with Corn and Cilantro

If you like a more "Boca" style texture to your burger, use some TVP or Texturized Vegetable Protein in your mixture as I have done in the recipe below. TVP is made from Soy Beans and is a great source of protein which is fat free. It is available in most Natural Foods Markets, and in Maine, you can find it in a funny little discount store called RENY's (a Maine Adventure!).

Boca-Style Burgers with a Southwest Flare

Ingredients:

2 cups TVP

1 3/4 cups H2O, boiling

5 or 6 T flax meal, ground

1 T minced onion

1 T garlic powder or fresh crushed garlic

2 T low sodium soy sauce or tamari

3/4 c. cooked brown rice

1 c. frozen chopped veggies, thawed

2 T. salsa

1/4 tsp. liquid smoke

Have some potato flour or oats on hand if needed to dry out the mixture. One thing about me and veggie burger making is I rarely use a recipe, I use what is in the fridge so its hard to keep track. I just go for the right consistency which is usually a bit dry with everything holding together really well.

Method:

1. Pour boiling water over TVP in a large bowl and set aside.

2. Mix all other ingredients in another large bowl using a potato masher OR pulse a bit in the Food Processor, NOT TOO MUCH, OK??

3. Mix TVP with other ingredients, sometimes I put the other ingredients in with the TVP and sometimes I put the TVP in with the other ingredients, I don't keep track.

4. Everything in these burgers is already pre-cooked, even the oats are steamed before dried so you could, in theory eat them as is but letting them sit for a while before pressing into Mason Jar lids or forming with hands will help them stick together. You can cook right away or freeze for later use. Lately I have been cooking on a grill pan and then freezing on sheet pans, then vacuum-sealing them for storage. Then I pop them out of the freezer and into the micro for a couple of minutes before pan-sauteing in non-stick pan.

So, the sky is the limit with the many different types of burgers/patties you can make. Last night's beans and rice are tonight's burgers. Seriously! We had Miso-glazed tofu for dinner last night with Trader Joe's Heritage Blend of Rice and Quinoa which I am about to transform in to burgers for a cookout we have having with Mish and her kids! I'll post some photos on Facebook and we will see how everyone enjoyed the burgers!

It is really difficult to find buns worthy of going into my mouth so I often enjoy my burgers on a salad or crumbled onto a corn tortilla cooked over an open flame. SOMETIMES I use Joseph's mini-pitas as I did for the Sloppy Josephines. I did buy some burger-style buns for tonight's cookout and at least they have 100% whole wheat and NO HFCS but it took a while to source such an animal!

After the burgers and salads, we will be chowing on the lil' cuties Ice Dream Sammiches! YUM!

Have a GREAT 4th of July everyone!

Sláinte!