Sweet Potato-Chickpea Burger

This is one of the simplest veggie burger I've ever made. It is hearty, delicious and is not mushy or crumbly like many other homemade veggie burgers. I saw Tricia Yearwood make these on her show 'Trisha's Southern Kitchen' on Food Network. I knew right away that I had to make these.

Roasting the sweet potato makes it take much better than just boiling. This roasted sweet potato is mashed along with chickpeas, flour and breadcrumbs to make the burgers. It is flavored with some red chili powder, parmesan cheese, salt and pepper. Feel free to to add some spices, like ground cumin or coriander or herbs to add more flavor and taste. But I thought they tasted great just as is.

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Lentil Chickpea Burger

Blogging Marathon# 54: Week 4/ Day 2

Theme: Lentils -- 3 Ways

Dish: Lentil Chickpea Burger

For Day 2 of this week's marathon, I have a protein rich burger made with a combination of lentils and chickpeas. Homemade veggie burgers usually don't hold up too well on the grill, but these burgers didn't fall apart on the grill and tasted awesome after grilling.

Recipe is from Vegetarian Times magazine and it was originally a Greek flavored burger, but I changed it to more of an Indian flavored one. If you want to, change up the herbs and spices and make up your own version.

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No Knead Cheese Burger Buns

BM# 51 -- Baking Marathon: Day 8

Bake of the Day: Breads -- No Knead Cheese Burger Buns

Today I have the recipe for some delicious burger buns that requires minimal hands-on time thanks to the no-knead method of preparing them. They are soft but sturdy enough to hold a veggie burger and all of its accouterments.

The ingredients are beaten in a mixing bowl for just 2 minutes and after that it is very very easy to make these soft, cheese-scented buns that are perfect for any kind of burger.

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Veggie Burger Sandwich (Beans & Veggie Burger)

Blogging Marathon# 50: Week 1/ Day 2

Theme: American Sandwiches

Dish: Veggie Burger Sandwich

Homemade Veggie burgers have a bad rap -- they are flavorless and have a very high tendency to fall apart while cooking. There are quite a few good quality frozen veggie burgers but most of them are soy based and have long list of unnecessary ingredients with very complicated spellings. There are a ton of recipes for veggie burger recipes on the Internet and after going through a number of recipes I found this recipe by Guy Fieri on the Food Network site.

This recipe uses 3 different types of beans; white, chickpeas and black beans. I used only 2 types of beans and the burger worked beautifully, it didn't fall apart on me and cooked perfectly in the skillet.

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Adzuki Beans & Brown Rice Burger with Sweet Potato Fries

Blogging Marathon# 33: Week 1/ Day 3
Theme: Combo Dishes - Tikkis/ Burgers
Dish: Adzuki Beans & Brown Rice Burger with Sweet Potato Fries
It has been unseasonally warm for the past couple of days and we are totally enjoying this weather. I took my mom, my almost 3 year old niece and my 1 year old to New York city (NYC) yesterday. We live about 20 minutes away from the city, but never go there to actually see places. I usually go there on business, either for a meeting or a seminar, never as a tourist.

I always wanted to take the NYC bus tour and finally did it yesterday. Its fun to sit on the open top double decker and see the sights of the city. I enjoyed the tour, but I want to do it again without the kids, so I can enjoy the city even more :-)

Well we came back home ravished and good thing that I had these adzuki bean-brown rice burgers frozen and ready to cook. All we had to was to bake some Sweet Potato fries and chop up some veggies for topping and in less than 30minutes we had a filling and delicious lunch.

Whole Foods sells Adzuki bean-brown rice burger. I never bought them but wanted to try that combo for a long time. Adzuki beans need only 2~3hours to soak and cook pretty quickly. In addition to the beans and rice, I added some bread crumbs, flour and a flax egg for binding. I flavored the burgers with Indian spices like kasoori methi and kitchen king masala. My focus group (my mom, sister and husband) liked them.

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Vegan Burger made with Refried Beans

Vegan MOFO Day 2: I planned to cook today's vegan lunch in 30 minutes and post it under '30 minute meals', but little did I know that my 3 week old had her own plans. I was hardly in the kitchen for 10 minutes, she started to cry and wanted to be fed and so my 30 minute meal ended up being more than an hour meal. Even though I wasn't able to make the meal under 30, but I'm sure it can done if there are no distractions.

One of my favorite things to do while on maternity leave is to watch tons of TV. Feeding time is the best time to catch up on Law & Order: SVU marathons and loads of cooking shows. One of the cooking shows I've started watching is Bal Arneson's Spice Goddess on Cooking Channel. I'm not too thrilled with her Americanized Indian accent and her over using of spices, but this Veggie Burger did catch my attention when I watched it. She used canned refried beans as the base for the burger and I thought that was a pretty genius idea.

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Beet Burger

I like beets, but they are not always on my grocery list. My DH has never had them and would never have them in the future which is reason enough for me not to buy. But I do end up buying them when they look very fresh and almost tempt me into putting them in the cart.

So that’s how I ended up with 2 perfectly plump beets in my fridge for almost a week, when I realized that I had to make something (for myself) or I would have to say goodbye to two great beet specimens.

Recipe is from “Totally Vegetarian” by Toni Fiore. The result was not your typical vegetarian burger; it’s savory-sweet (but not too sweet), delicate and crumbly. No bread is needed for this, but you would definitely need a fork.

Recipe adapted from Totally Vegetarian by Toni Fiore

Ingredients:

Beets – 2 medium, peeled and quartered

Carrot – 1 medium, peeled and roughly chopped

Onion – 1 medium, chopped

Garlic – 2 cloves, minced

Millet – 1 cup

Whole-wheat bread – 2 slices, toasted

Wheat germ – ½ cup

Walnut pieces – ½ cup

Salt and pepper – to taste

Method:

• Preheat oven to 375°F.
• Add beets, carrots and onions to the baking sheet; add 1 tbsp oil, season with salt and pepper; mix well and roast for 20-40 minutes or until the veggies are tender.
• In the meantime, bring 2 cups water to a boil; stir in millet and cook covered on low heat for 30 minutes or until millet is fully cooked. Remove into a mixing bowl and let cool.
• In the food processor blend walnuts, wheat germ, toasted bread cut into pieces; process until it has a fine crumb textile. Add to cooked millet.
• When the veggies are done and cool enough to handle, process them in the food processor until finely chopped. Add to cooked millet mixture. Season liberally with salt and pepper; mix well with a spoon. Refrigerate the mixture for an hour to chill.
  
• Make burgers with about ¾ cup of the mixture. I got about 16 medium size burgers while Toni made 8 huge ones.

• To cook the burgers: heat 1 tbsp oil in a sauté pan on low heat. When the pan is hot, add the burgers. Do not touch or move them once in the pan, otherwise they will fall apart. Cook for 5-10 minutes (depending on the size of the burger), then carefully flip with a spatula and cook for another 5-10 minutes. These have to be cooked on low heat otherwise beet sugars will be burnt.

I served them with home fries for brunch and it made a complete meal. The mixture can be refrigerated until used or uncooked patties can be frozen for later use. I layered the patties with a piece of foil and froze them in a freezer bag, so I can make them whenever I have a taste for them. Actually my DH really liked them since they don't taste too much like beets. They have a nutty and a pleasant sweet-savory taste, I'm sure beet-haters like my hubby would like them.

Black-eye Peas Burgers

I have been cooking from Totally Vegetarian cookbook by Toni Fiore a lot these days. One reason being it’s a borrowed book that I have to return in couple of weeks and the other reason is the recipes are very interesting with ingredients that I have in my pantry and so I cannot stop myself from making them right away.

I like to make burgers, you know the whole mixing the ingredients with hand and making them into patties is kind of therapeutic to me. I know it sounds weird, but that’s me. I watch Rachael Ray making her meat burgers and I’m thinking to myself, I wish I could smoosh and rub vegetarian burgers like that.

Recipe adapted from Totally Vegetarian.
Ingredients:
Black-eye Peas – 2 cups, cooked or 1 15.5 oz can, drained and rinsed
Cremini Mushrooms – 8 medium, chopped (recipe calls for 6 oz.)
Shallot – 1 medium, chopped fine
Scallion – 1, white & green parts chopped fine
Garlic – 2 cloves, minced
Toasted walnuts – ½ cup, chopped (Toast in a dry skillet on medium flame for about 5-6 minutes until you smell the nice toasty aroma of the nuts, don’t let them go too far or the nuts will burn)
Coriander leaves – 3 tbsp (or parsley)
AP flour – ¼ cup

Method:

• Mash the peas with the back of a fork in a mixing bowl. Add shallot, scallions, coriander, salt and pepper; mix well.
• Heat 1 tbsp oil in a skillet, add mushrooms and sauté on medium heat for 5 minutes.
• Add walnuts and garlic and cook until mushrooms are cooked through but not watery.
• Add mushrooms to the pea mixture. Mix well. The mixture at this point is crumbly, but can be easily made into patties.
• Heat 2tbsp oil in a skillet on medium heat; roll the patties in flour to coat and place them in the hot skillet.
• Cook for 5-6 minutes or until crust forms. Flip the burgers carefully and cook for another 5-6 minutes on the other side.

These burgers can be served with or without a bun. I served them on whole-grain sandwich bread with mayo, ketchup and arugula and mini-tomato clafoutis for a filling brunch. Yum.. Recipe makes 6-7 medium size burgers. I froze the leftover patties for later use.

This is my entry to this month’s My Legume Love Affair – 9th helping being hosted by Laurie @ MedCookingAlaska. MLLA is a monthly event started by Susan @ Well Seasoned Cook.

Lentil Walnut Burger

I am late for this month's Lentil theme JFI#3 (Jihva for ingredients) hosted by Sailu. I hope she accepts my late entry.
I made Lentil-Walnut burger for our mini in-house barbeque for 4th of July. I saw them made on TV (pbs - channel 13) few weeks ago and wanted to give them a try(above pic is courtesy pbs tv). Adding cumin and coriander powders gave the burgers an Indian taste.

Ingredients:
Green Lentils - ¾ cup, cooked, drained and cooled
Toasted Walnuts - ¾ cup, cooled
Dried breadcrumbs - 1/3 cup (I used 3 potato bread slices and it worked just fine)
Garlic - 3 cloves
Ground Cumin - 2 tsp
Ground Coriander - 2 tsp
Red pepper flakes - ½ tsp
Large Egg - 1
Olive oil - 1tbsp
Salt and pepper - to taste

Method:

• In a food processor, combine walnuts, breadcrumbs (or bread slices), garlic, cumin, coriander, pepper flakes, salt (I used 1 ½ tsp and it was just right, but if you eat less salt, reduce the amount), and ¼ tsp pepper; process until finely ground.
• Add lentils and oil; pulse until coarsely chopped (some lentils should remain whole).
• In a large bowl, whisk egg and add lentil mixture; mix well.
• Divide mixture into equal size parts; roll into balls, and flatten with the palm of your hand into ¾ inch thick patties (I made 9 medium size patties).
• Heat a large nonstick skillet. Spray with non-stick cooking spray.
• Add burgers; cook over medium-low heat until crisp and browned, turning gently with a spatula, 8 to 10 minutes per side.
• Serve hot.

I made Indira’s Sesame buns and had our burgers with mayo, ketchup and cheese. Really healthy and not very difficult to put together.