Sunday, August 21, 2011

Vegan Burgers ... With Cheese








I love any kind of burger--beef, turkey, chicken, pork, black bean, veggie, etc. I often order veggie burgers in restaurants when I know they make them in house (I hate it when a restaurant just serves a warmed up Boca or Moringstar burger. Come on! I can do that at home). So I've eaten a lot of veggie burgers in my day.


I stumbled across these veggie burgers on food blogs I enjoy reading. I'm pretty sure I first saw the blogger from Iowa Girl Eats (I love her blog!) mention she had these burgers from the blog Oh She Glows.




The gal from Oh She Glows blogs only about vegan recipes. She came up with this recipe after experimenting with lots of different ingredients and ways of making them. I thought they sounded interesting, and I convinced Nate to give them a try.



It took a little effort to make--there are lots of little steps and things to prep--but they were definitely worth it. They were so tasty and incredibly healthy. Plus, the recipe makes a lot, so we had (and still have, in the freezer) plenty of leftovers.




I followed the recipe pretty closely, but did a few things differently or have some words of advice:


  • I was skeptical about the "flax eggs" (I didn't think it would actually bind everything together, but it ended up working really well. You could certainly use eggs, too, if you didn't need the burgers to be vegan.

  • I thought I could find oat flour at Outpost, but I couldn't. I ended up just putting regular oats in the food processor and making the flour that way. It worked great!

  • Instead of processing my own bread crumbs, I used 1.5 cups of regular bread crumbs mixed with some Panko breadcrumbs.

  • I highly recommend throwing carrots in the food processor to cut them up--grating carrots is a pain in the butt!

  • Surprisingly, the burgers formed pretty well. I thought they would fall apart like a lot of veggie/black bean burgers do, but these stayed in tact pretty well.

  • The recipe author suggests a few ways for cooking the burgers. We ended up pan frying ours, and it worked just fine.

  • The recipe authors says they make 8 burgers. I think I ended up forming 6 or 7 patties, and I think 8 would have been better. They don't look that big, but, man, are they filling!


Of course, we had to add cheese to our burgers, making them non-vegan burgers, but that's OK. I think they would be just as good without the cheese, too.



They were really, really good. I would definitely make them again.



Nate, Mr. Meat Eater himself, gave them two thumbs up, too!


2 comments:

  1. I love Angels from Oh She Glows (i've been following her for about 2 years now) so I know exactly which burgers you are talking about. I've been tempted to try them (even more so now because you liked them and you aren't vegan).

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  2. Yes! You should definitely try them! Have you ever had walnut burgers (you can order them at Beans and Barley and buy them at Outpost)? They reminded me of those, only "meatier." Yum!!

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