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!

Crockpot Curried Vegetables & "Rice"

I know I've said it before, but I'll say it again--I love crockpot recipes, and I especially like making them for Monday night dinner. This way, we usually have plenty of leftovers for lunches and even one dinner throughout the week.


This recipe for Curried Vegetables & Rice (I'll get to the rice part) jumped out at me while flipping through my Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes. I love anything with curry, and I wanted to find a vegetarian recipe.


The recipe was super easy and had lots of great, tasty stuff in it. That being said, there are a few things I would do differently next time.





Curried Vegetables

• 3 medium potatoes, cut into 1/2-in. chunks (3 cups)


• 4 medium carrots, cut into 1/4-in. slices (2 cups)


• 1 large red onion, cut into strips (1 cup)


• 1.25 cups apple juice


• 2 Tbs. quick-cooking tapioca


• 2 teas. curry powder


• 1 teas. grated fresh ginger (I used a little less than a teaspoon of ground ginger)


• 1/2 teas. salt


• 1/2 teas. ground cardamom


• 1 12.3-oz. (or 14 oz., like I used) package extra-firm tofu, drained and cut into 3/4-in. cubes


• 1 medium zucchini, halved lengthwise and cut into 1/2-in. slices


• 1 cup frozen peas


• 1/3 cup golden raisins


• chutney (optional) (we used mango chutney)


• 1 cup rice uncooked

In a crockpot, combine ingredients from potatoes to cardamom.

Cover, cook on low for 8-10 hours or on high for 4-5 hours.

Cook rice according to package directions.

If cooking on low, turn to high heat setting. Add tofu, zucchini, peas and raisins to cooker. Cover and cook for 30 minutes more. Serve veggie mix over hot cooked rice and top with chutney.

There are two things I would do differently next time (and I would definitely make it again--it was very tasty and satisfying):

• I'd brown the tofu a bit first to create a better texture and seal in some flavors before putting it in the crockpot.


• The tofu wasn't as warm as we would have liked--cooking it a bit before would help this, but it would also help to cook everything on high for more like 45-60 minutes.

So, the rice ... Neither of us can make rice all that well on the stovetop, so we invested in a rice cooker a few years ago. It works really well and makes great rice. The problem is, is that Nate is usually the one who cooks it, and he was working late Monday night. So I had to make it. Long story short, the measurements didn't add up and the rice was crunchy and inedible. So instead of rice, we served the curry veggies with rice noodles I cooked. It was OK, but the rice noodle flavor was too overpowering. It would have been better with fewer noodles or just plain with no type of rice/noodle. Tonight's leftovers will be served over couscous, which I think will taste better.