Adventures in Homemade Veggie Burgers

Whenever I find myself away from my college dorm, in a real kitchen stocked with more than one pan and almost certain to have a full set of utensils, I feel obligated to try out a new recipe from one of the hundreds I have bookmarked on my computer. This can be tough, since I'm the only vegetarian at my house and I hate to waste food, so I usually have to scale down my recipes significantly, and there's some things I just can't make in that small of a batch. Fortunately this break, I had a fellow vegetarian staying with me, so I decided to go for the most complicated veggie burger recipe in my collection and see what happened.

What happened, as it turned out, was a full scale food disaster involving approximately 3 or 4 hours of preparation time that could have been better used for school work, opening all the windows in my house after setting off the smoke alarm, and not actually even eating the veggie burgers until a couple days later, because by the time they were edible, we were both stressed and sort of full from all the other food we'd eaten to tide us over. I think I might have over reached a little, but hey, I learned a lot, and hopefully that will help me in the future. I hope it will help you, if you want to try your hand at this in the future.

Best-Ever Beet and Bean Burgers (also known as a recipe for disaster)

Adapted badly from theKitchn

Begin by scaling your original recipe, supposedly 6 servings, down to a 2 serving recipe. This involves dividing all your measurements into thirds, and is thoroughly not recommended. But supposing you do that anyways, you're going to want to start by taking one large beet, wrapping it in foil, roasting it at 400°F for about an hour, then peeling and grating it (the grated beets should be squeezed and drained to get as much liquid out as possible). As it turns out, "one large beet" is a super inexact measurement, and I'm pretty sure mine was extra large, because it sure seemed like I ended up with too much beet (If you want to do better than me, I'd recommend trying to follow the more exact measurements in your source recipe, and actually weighing out 1/3 lb. of beet). Next, you want to cook 1/6 of a cup of dried rice, because it's time to start regretting your decision to divide things into thirds. While your rice is cooking, dice about a third of a medium onion while crying, because this is a strong onion AND this recipe might be a bad life decision. Don't worry about being too exact, it's clear by now that this is a tough thing to be exact about. Brown the onion in some olive oil, then add an indiscriminate amount of jarred minced garlic because you're too lazy to mince garlic, and an indiscriminate amount of apple cider vinegar, because there's no way you're going to figure out what a third of two tablespoons is. Make 1/12 of a cup of oat flour in a food processor, because you obviously hate yourself. Set it aside and food process about 3/4 of a can of black beans and a couple chopped prunes, trying to leave some of the beans whole.

Now that you've spent FOREVER making the separate parts, you get to mix them all together in a bowl! Add everything except the oat flour, then mix in 1/3 tbs. smoked paprika, ~3/4 tsp. brown mustard, 1/3 tsp. cumin, 1/6 teaspoon coriander (good luck with that), 1/6 teaspoon dried thyme (again, not happening). I also added some chipotle chili pepper before mixing in the oat flour.

Now you have this, which doesn't look much like the pictures online. It's not dry enough. You've probably made a huge mistake. But you stick it in the fridge for a couple of hours to let it sit, as instructed, in case that will fix it.

It won't.

In the meantime, eat your salad! Mix some arugula with goat cheese, pecans, chopped green apple, and lemon juice.

Now it's time to attempt to cook these burgers, which actually turn out to be three patties and look like they're going to fall apart on your prep plate. Now, to best achieve recipe disaster, make sure to cook them on a cast iron skillet on your electric stove. You've never done that before, but you've used both of them separately, so I'm sure it'll be no problem to combine those experiences and made some Grade A food, right?

Not right. Burn your first burger in the skillet and freeze your house by opening up all the windows because the oven hood fan isn't working. At least you're back down to two burgers now.

Now it's time to try baking them! 375°F for 10 minutes on each side.

Now it's 4 PM and you finally put together some burgers. You take one bite to see how they taste (too soft, beet flavor too strong, otherwise promising), you take a picture of your plating, and then you finish your salad and wrap up the burger for later.

VERDICT: Would recommend recipe. Would not recommend attempting to scale it down by a third. Would not recommend attempting so many new things at once. Go forth and try not to have food disasters of your own.