The 10-minute veggie burger recipe you've been waiting for
Let's review the issues with veggie burgers, shall we? It's been a while since I vented about this, but I'll keep it brief. I'll even boil it down to a simple equation that I think captures the bulk of the problems: If they're not fall-apart dry, they're bean-dip mushy.
I've jumped through many a hoop to correct such problems in veggie burger recipes of my own design (or adaptation), but that doesn't mean I've stopped searching. When you're cooking different vegetarian dishes every night of the week, you can certainly use more than a couple of veggie burger recipes in your repertoire.
I've learned what to look out for: First and foremost, any recipe that tells me to put the patty ingredients into a food processor meets with skepticism. Sure, you can pulse-pulse-pulse and try to make sure you leave something chunky, but my favorite technique is good, old-fashioned chopping and mixing by hand. That helps prevent a smooth texture, the enemy of any burger worth making (or eating).
The other requirement is a good binder, and enough of it: something other than eggs (because I want my veggie burgers to be plant-based) that will help those ingredients stick together.
One solution is to pre-bake the patties, to help make them easier to handle without breaking, and to then pan-fry or grill them right before serving. As long as there is enough moisture in the mix to keep the burgers from drying out in the double-cooking, that works well. But it's not exactly the kind of process you can manage on a time-crunched weeknight.
When I saw Ella Woodward's take on a black bean burger in her new book, "Deliciously Ella Every Day," it seemed a little too good to be true: just 10 ingredients (including salt and pepper), with the promise they would take only 10 minutes to throw together. But they met my top two criteria: You mash the beans with a fork, leaving some whole beans apparent, and stir in the other ingredients, including chickpea flour, tomato paste and applesauce, all of which help bind.
Sure enough, they come together in no time and get nice and crisp on the edges from a brief turn in the skillet. They're moist inside (and tasty, thanks to a seasoning mix of chili powder, tamari, vinegar and lime) but not mushy.
I'm not sure whether they're quite substantial enough to be easily eaten between buns without some squishing, but there's an easy fix for that: a knife and a fork.