Not So Superior Burger @LucyBurdette

LUCY BURDETTE: I’ve recently subscribed to a substack from the cookbook/writer Jenny Rosenstratch. I love her writing and I like her decision to lean vegetarian, at least during the week. In one of those recent newsletters, she described a trip to the East Village in New York to the home of the superiority burger. It sounded so amazing! But on the other hand, what were the chances of convincing John to truck into the city for a veggie burger? Not that great.

So I tracked down two versions of this no meat burger recipe made of chickpeas and quinoa and various other ingredients (many of them). As I alluded to, the recipe includes multiple ingredients, many pans, and results in what is more or less a crumbly pile. The end result was certainly good enough to eat, with lots of ‘burgers’ leftover to add to our freezer, but I will probably not make them again. If I do end up in the East Village one of these days and the line is not around the block, I would love to taste the real superiority burger that people rave about.

For this recipe, I leaned on one I found in the Washington Post and another in Forbes magazine. I made a few tweaks as per usual!

Ingredients 

One medium or two small yellow onions

2 teaspoons fennel seeds, toasted and ground

1 teaspoon chili powder

Salt and pepper

One cup cooked chickpeas (you can use a can, but better still is cooking a bag of dried chickpeas ahead of time and stashing one cup containers in your freezer)

2/3 cup quinoa

Three small carrots

1/2 cup Panko

3/4 cup pecans (the other recipes called for walnuts, which I do not prefer)

One lemon

1 tablespoon hot chili sauce of your choice.

1/4 cup potato starch

One and a half cups water +2 tablespoons, divided

Toasted buns, mustard, pickles, lettuce, avocado, all the fixings of your choosing

Simmer the quinoa in a cup and a half of water for about half an hour until the water is absorbed. Set this aside to cool and fluff up.

Chop the onions and the carrots and sauté them until soft in a bit of oil. Add the toasted ground fennel seeds, and the chili powder to the sauté, and continue cooking until everything is fragrant. Add the chickpeas and cook them until warm then mash them in with the other vegetables and spices. (I used the bottom of a metal measuring cup, but use the implement of your choice.)

Toast the pecans lightly, and grind them. Add these to the cooled quinoa and the ingredients from the frying pan. Mix in the Panko and lemon juice.

In another small bowl, stir the potato starch with 2 tablespoons of water, adding a little more if needed to create a thick slurry. Mix this into the quinoa. Scoop out balls of the veggie burger mix and sauté them in a bit of oil, about three minutes per side. 

Serve on a nice bun with condiments of your choice.

This made nine burgers for me, so I wrapped and froze the leftovers. Phew!

Don’t forget to pre-order LUCY BURDETTE’S KITCHEN, Recipes and Stories from the Key West Food Critic mystery series...(No, you will not find this veggie burger recipe in that book!)

Lucy Burdette writes the Key West food critic mystery series including USA Today bestselling and Florida book award winning A CLUE IN THE CRUMBS. You can order that wherever books are sold. 

If you’re all caught up, try Lucy’s first women’s fiction title, THE INGREDIENTS OF HAPPINESS.

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