With harvest season in full swing at the area’s farmers markets, it’s hard not to resist going a little overboard with produce. With my garden going crazy at the moment, I find that the drawers in the refrigerator are getting fuller by the day. There are few things more sad than letting fresh veggies go to waste. Putting them all through my juicer is an option, but your third beat, carrot, kale and radish juice of the day, you start looking for other options.
By no means am I a vegetarian, I love a good old-fashioned, meat-filled cookout. That being said, there are quite a few times when I could go without a juicy burger and opt for a filling veggie patty instead. As I combed through the frozen food aisle looking at relatively unappealing options, I put two and two together, why don’t I just make these from my left overs at home.
When crafting the perfect veggie burger, keep in mind the two basic components: binders and fillers. For my burger I choose the easy way and went with egg, flour and quinoa for my binding agents. The egg and flour do most of the “sticking together” work, but the quinoa also provides something to keep everything intact while cooking. For fillers, I went with mainly items I had picked up at the Saturday Town Square Market, Wednesday Night Peoples Market, and Thursday’s Market at the Movieworks Plaza including, beets, corn, onions, garlic and sweet peppers.
Ingredients
- 2 medium beets
- 1 onion, medium dice
- 1 sweet pepper, medium dice
- 3 ears corn
- 3 cloves garlic
- 1 egg
- 3 cups cooked quinoa
- 1/2 cup flour
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- salt and pepper to taste
Instructions
- Boil beets, corn and quinoa until cooked through and set aside to cool.
- Place cooked quinoa in large mixing bowl.
- Cut beets into a medium dice and add to quiona.
- Cut corn kernels off ear and add to mixing bowl with quinoa and beets.
- Saute onions, peppers and garlic until soft and add to quinoa mixture.
- Stir in egg to mixture while slowly adding flour, mix throughly.
- Add salt and pepper to taste.
- Oil a sheet pan and preheat oven to 275 F.
- Form mixture into patties and place patties on sheet.
- Bake patties 10 minutes each side, remove from oven to cool.
- Separate with wax paper and freeze until ready to use.
- (If mixture is too wet and doesn't form into patties, add additional flour).
Just remember one thing when it comes to veggie patties, they are completely customizable. Try subbing out quinoa for lentils or faro. Teft or rice flour also is a great binder to substitute for flour to make the recipe gluten free. The biggest thing is getting the mixture to a good, sticky consistency so it doesn’t fall apart on you. Moisture is not your friend so be sure to let whatever you put in cool and dry it throughly. Other than that, the sky is the limit, I might even put a few slices of bacon on the next ones I thaw out.
