My good friend Jeremy writes a blog called Jeremy Cooks Dinner where he photographs and describes his home-cooked (omnivorous) dinners. We’ve cooked dinner together in the past, and it was tons of fun, so we decided to make a dinner together that we could both post to our blogs – homemade veggie burgers!
After perusing my collection of literally hundreds of bookmarked recipes, we picked one for Roasted Pepper Veggie Burgers from Buff Chickpea’s blog - which unfortunately has not been updated in over a year, but the burger recipe had come up in a google search I did at one point, and it looked too good to resist.
All our ingredients laid out in front of Jeremy’s lovely spice racks
This recipe is, obviously, not vegan (it is dairy-free though, which is good for people like me!)
I somehow neglected to take photos of the red bell peppers and the jalapeno peppers which we roasted in the oven, but they smelled delicious! I was really excited about this recipe because of those particular ingredients – I love roasted peppers.
Jeremy chops the cilantro with his Culinary Institute-trained skills
We only had whole flax seed, and despite our best efforts with a mortar and pestel and then with the food processor, the seeds refused to be ground… so we just threw them in whole. Can you even buy pre-ground flax seed at the store? I don’t think I’ve ever seen it.
Forming the mixture into patties
Browning in the frying pan… they smelled really good…
Done!
Topped with lettuce, tomato, horseradish, and extra sprouts
Of course we dorked-out for a few minutes taking photographs at the beginning of our meal… silly bloggers!
But then we started eating…
We concluded that the burgers were quite good – they fried up very well, with that crispy outside that I love. Even though we made them extra-thick they cooked all the way through. And they held together perfectly on the bun - no bits falling out or sliding out from under the tomatoes! Even our error of adding whole flax seed instead of ground turned out fine (so if you want to make this recipe and find yourself in the same predicament, just throw the seeds in whole and don't worry.)
Tasty!
The flavor just needed a little kick of something… and the lemon zest was a little strong and needed something else to balance it out. We topped them with lots of horseradish, which seemed to do the trick. Jeremy thought adding the horseradish into the burger mixture before cooking might be a good idea to try next time. Possibly with other spices like ground pepper and cumin as well. While I’m not as big a fan of spicy things as Jeremy is (read his post about The Ingredient and you’ll know what I mean), I still think that these burgers also could have benefited from a higher ratio of roasted peppers to chickpeas – like twice the amount of roasted peppers. And we both agreed that sautéing the onions before mixing them in would have added great flavor.
But it’s a great base idea for a veggie burger – not too heavy on the beans (although I do enjoy a good black bean burger, I like an even mix of veggies most of the time! The roasted peppers in this satisfied that desire quite well), and the addition of sprouts to the mixture was brilliant. Why don’t more veggie burgers have sprouts in them? I love sprouts – hence my putting extra on top the patty even though there were plenty inside it already.
I’d definitely make these again, and just try a few of the changes Jeremy and I thought of. The best thing about cooking burgers at home is they are so versatile!
The recipe says it makes 12-15 small burgers… but we were really hungry, so we ended up with just 4 large burgers and enough leftovers for 2 more.
Recipe from Buff Chickpea
co-chef Jeremy from Jeremy Cooks Dinner
Read Jeremy's veggie burger post HERE.
YumVeggieBurger review #33
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those look like a perfect mix of flavors! You can totally buy ground flaxseed at the store- it's called flax meal and it's sold with all the fancy flours. It's a great binder either way though, as you obviously found out :-D
ReplyDeletethese look amazing minus the egg, of course for us vegans...i'm defiantly considering making them sans egg :]
ReplyDeletethanks Dianne! :)
ReplyDeleteI love chickpeas. This burger looks delish!
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ReplyDeleteMaking perfect veggie definitely takes practice. I just love your description of this one. It sounds dreamy!
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