This recipe makes a well-flavoured, chewy burger, which holds together well. Unlike many veg~an burgers, it can happily be cooked on a barbecue, pan fried or even cooked over a camp fire. Because of this, it’s also very good to take with you to cook elsewhere and saves your hosts from the bother of trying to provide a veg~an offering. Annie's burger seasoning does raise the flavour beyond the ordinary, but if you don’t have any, or don’t want to make it, use a few of the herbs and spices from the blend, to season the burgers. The recipe is at the bottom of this post.
Most veg~an burgers – even seitan burgers – contain beans, but for two burgers, you won’t require a whole can, and cooking them from scratch is another complete step. I also find that the burgers aren’t as firm, when made with beans, so instead I use bulgur wheat or couscous. You have to use the really fine bulgur for this – if yours is a bit coarse, use the couscous. You can make seitan without beans or grains, but I find it really too chewy.
- Put the couscous or bulgur into a bowl and add the miso/yeast extract.
- Pour over the boiling water, mix well, cover and leave it for ten minutes or so until all the water is absorbed.
- Add the burger spice and combine well.
- Now stir in the nutritional yeast.
- Mix in the water, soya sauce, tomato paste, vinegar, olive oil/tahini, salt and pepper. Ensure that everything is thoroughly mixed, because it’s harder to do once you’ve added the VWG.
- Now dump in the vital wheat gluten and mix as well as you can with a knife or spatula.
- Finish off combining the ingredients, using your hands, until it becomes a rough dough.
- Knead the dough against the side of the mixing bowl until you have a cohesive lump of dough.
- Put the dough onto a board and flatten it out with your hands. Cut into half (or quarters) and shape each half/quarter like a hamburger patty.
- Add water to your pressure cooker – this shouldn’t cover the trivet – 1/4 cup should be about right, with a modern pressure cooker.
- Grease the trivet or steam basket, or – better – cover it with a piece of baking parchment.
- Put in the burgers. If you’re cooking 4 and they won’t fit in a single layers, separate them with some more paper.
- Bring the cooker up to pressure and cook for 5 minutes. Reduce pressure naturally. Take out the burgers and put them on something like a rack, so that they don’t end up sitting in water, when they’ve cooled. You can fry or barbecue them once the surface moisture has evaporated.
- Substitute 2 tsp mixed, Italian or fines herbes for Annie’s burger spice.
- Add chilli flakes or Dijon mustard if you would like a bit more zing.
- The olive oil or tahini are to add a bit of fat. You could use deodorised coconut oil, if you wanted to experiment. Or go the whole hog (!) and add vegan suet.
- Instead
of the couscous, use 1/2 cup of cooked orange kumara (sweet
potato), cooked in the jacket
and then skinned and mashed. These kumara easily break down
into a purée. Don’t use the red-skinned – they don’t
cook down into the right sort of ‛mush’. How much, you ask in
irritation, is a half cup of cooked kumara? Just guess – it’s
not super critical and you can always add a drop more water – or
VWG if it’s too wet. This is when scales come into their own –
but not on a small boat in
a bouncy anchorage. The kumara is intended to keep the burgers
more moist. ‛Ordinary’, aka Irish potatoes, are too dry.
- Put all the ingredients into a grinder and pulverise until powdered.
Keep in a glass jar, out of the light and use within a maximum of 6 months. Dried herbs have a short shelf life.
You will find many more seitan recipes here.
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