Quinoa Burgers
I recently picked up one of my favourite cook books to date, Vegan Diner by Julie Hasson. Fancied up comfort food is my specialty and diners are my weakness, so I snatched this book off the shelf at Chapters and headed to the kitchen to test it out. My first go was this quinoa burger recipe. I don’t make burgers very often, and thought that should change with the summer bbq-ing season not far ahead. I chose this one in lieu of the other two burger recipes in the book (Mushroom Burgers and Brown Rice Hazelnut Burgers) simply because I had all the ingredients on hand.
They were delicious! Their moist and savoury middle and crispy outer layer, combined with the fact that they stayed together during cooking/flipping gained these burgers high scores with me (doesn’t it suck when they fall apart?) The sauteed maple onions and really fresh wholewheat kaiser were top notch additions. These burgers will definitely be gracing my plate all summer long!
Ingredients:
(Makes about 6 burgers)
1/2 cup diced yellow onion
3 cloves garlic
12 ounces chickpeas (about 1 1/2 cups), canned or homemade, drained
1/2 cup quick oats (not instant)
1 1/2 cups cooked quinoa
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley
1 teaspoon poultry seasoning or favourite spice blend
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
2 tablespoons Bragg Liquid Aminos or soy sauce
2 tablespoons chickpea flour (I used coconut flour)
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Brown rice flour or wholewheat/all purpose flour, for dusting
Olive oil, for cooking
Buns, condiments (lettuce, tomato, mustard, avocado)
Sauteed maple onions:
saute half an onion in 1 teaspoon of olive oil and 1 teaspoon maple syrup until slightly caramelized and golden
Method:
In a food processor, add the onion and garlic and pulse until finely chopped. Add the chickpeas and oats and pulse until well mixed. Don’t puree the mixture. Remove the mixture to a large mixing bowl, and stir in the quinoa, parsley, poultry seasoning, smoked paprika, Bragg Liquid Aminos, and chickpea flour. Stir in 1 to 2 tablespoons water, if needed to help the burger mixture stick together, although you don’t want to make the mixture too moist. Add salt and pepper to taste. Thoroughly mix the ingredients, cover the bowl and refrigerate for 15 minutes. Form the burger mixture into 6 balls, and press into 3 1/2 to 4-inch patties.
Heat a large cast-iron skillet over medium-high heat, and lightly coat or spray with olive oil. Place the brown rice flour on a small plate and dust the burgers on all sides with the rice flour. Add the burgers to the hot skillet. Cook the patties for about 5 minutes, or until nicely browned and crispy. Reduce the heat to medium, if necessary, to continue cooking without burning. Add more olive oil as necessary, to keep the burgers from sticking. Flip the burgers over and cook on other side.
Remove the burgers from the skillet and let sit for 5 minutes before serving. Letting them rest will give them a better texture. Serve the burgers on a fresh, whole grain bun with all the fixings: lettuce, tomato, sauteed maple onions – and don’t forget the mustard!
~The Vegan Project
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Yum, I love a new veggie burger, especially ones without mushrooms or black beans, and can easily be made gluten free. Can you tell we have some picky/specific food needs in our home?
All that to make a hamburger? I’ll stick with ground beef or turkey. It doesn’t take 15 ingredients to make it taste good.
Thanks for checking us out Seal! We think the extra steps are worth it
Try mushroom & pinto bean burgers – 1 can pinto beans, a good double handful sliced chestnut mushrooms (the more the merrier!), chopped thyme, garlic and ground cumin. Sauté the mushrooms, thyme & garlic in olive oil; add to all the other ingredients and mash thoroughly. Season & shape into 2 burgers. Fry in a little oil & serve with home made potato wedges & salad
I just got Vegan Diner from the library. Wow. I don’t often buy books but recipe after recipe sounded so tasty, I couldn’t resist!
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These look delish! What a cool blog – so happy to find you! (Thanks to Jennifer from Sweet on Veg)
We LOVE Sweet on Veg! Jennifer has a knack for finding such great vegan stuff on the web. Thanks for visiting
I just made these! they didnt turn out as dark brown likes yours, but they are awesome!! i ate 2 and a half of them just now…. soooo good
and my batter gave me 8!!! ^_^
I love Vegan Diner. Such a great book.
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This was my first recipe using quinoa. I was amazed how good the burgers were. They were a lot of work, but well worth it. I am going to freeze some of the burgers for later. Any suggestions on what else to use instead of garbanzo beans? I loved the beans in this recipe, but unfortunately I am not suppose to eat beans.
Does that mean lentils too? Maybe some extra firm organic tofu, mashed up?
is that 1/2 cups of quinoa after its cooked or before?
It’s 1 1/2 cups cooked cooked. Happy Eating!
This is a great resourse for us vegans – THANK YOU!
@Bridget – good question for Cheri – ‘does that mean lentils too?’ Chick peas/garbanzo beans are in the lentils family, not beans, so that may help.
I can’t wait to try this burger recipe.
turned out really well. Very tasty. However, don’t think the coating of flour before frying is necessary. Maybe because I was trying to limit the use of oil and used a cooking spray, it was absorbed into the flour, which made the patties dry. I tried the last batch without flour and it was best.
i tried this but with less ingredients (i just didn’t happen to have everything) quinoa, garbonzo, garlic, olive oil and whole wheat flour.. YUM!!! thanks so much for the inspiration! (:
Yum! You’re welcome
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