Foodie Friday - Veggie, Bean And Nut Burgers

The quest to find a perfect bean burger for me is a never ending one, there are so many combinations of  beans and ingredients to try. This is another experiment based on a recipe from one of my favourite vegetarian books "The New Students Veggie Cook Book" by Carolyn Humphries. It's not the lowest calorie recipe by any means coming in at roughly 305 calories a burger including the cooking oily  but they are pretty cheap to make and it's full of protein, texture and taste.

Veggie, Bean And Nut Burgers 

 410g Can Beans Or Pulses

2 Slices Bread Or One Bread Roll

1/2 Onion

25g Nuts

2 Eggs

1 Tsp Marmite 

1 Carrot

1 Parsnip

Salt And Pepper To Taste 

Oil For Frying 

1. Drain you beans or pulses well and give them a rinse

2. Pop them into a large bowl 

and mash them up with a fork or a potato masher

3. Crumble up your bread into small pieces and add it to the bowl. I'm using a white gluten free roll here.

4. Finely chop your nuts if they aren't already chopped - mine weren't so I just popped them into the food processor and add them to the bowl.

5. Peel your onion and grate that into the bowl. The original recipe doesn't contain onion but I think it makes a big difference

6. Peel and grate your parsnip and add that to the bowl

7. Peel and grate your carrot and add that to the bowl 

8. Add your Marmite x

Then give it a good mix and then slowly add your beaten eggs and salt and pepper to taste

Mix it either with a spoon or get your hands dirty until the mixture holds together, you might need a little bit more or a little less egg - you don't want it too wet and you don't want it too dry otherwise they will fall apart x Then refrigerate for at least half an hour to allow the mixture to firm up a bit x

9. Divide the mixture into 4, roll it into 4 balls and form into burger shapes.

10. Then shallow fry until the burgers are warmed through and golden brown on both sides. - don't panic if they fall apart a bit even shop bought bean burgers do that :)

Voila serve immediately - This recipe makes four substantial burger but obviously you could make more smaller ones. Me and Mummy Lou just had one burger each served with salad,

The two remaining burgers from this recipe were put on a plate, on a sheet of grease proof paper in the fridge.

They're okay for a few days just bring them back to room temperature and then fry off. We had these ones with Slimming World chips, and salad :)

Hints And Tips

* It much easier and quicker to used tinned beans or pulses, who wants to faff on with boiling and soaking. You can use any variety you like, the original recipe used aduki beans but I used a tin of mixed pulses which contained chickpeas, soya beans, black eyed beans, pinto beans, red kidney beans and aduki beans but any of those would works as I guess would baked beans!

*Again you can use whatever nuts you like I'm using salted peanuts but again use whatever you like. You can actually buy packs of chopped mixed nuts which would make it easier and omit the chopping stage.

*This recipe uses Marmite as the main flavouring but you could mix it up a bit and add curry powder or paste, which would work really well with the parsnip and carrot or even chilli paste, chilli flakes, whatever you want x 

* The vegetable combination in this one works really well but again you could experiment with what you have in the fridge

*Of course it goes without saying that you could use a food processor not only for your grating and chopping
but also for mixing everything together. Of course I'm on a health kick where every movement is exercise so I did most of mine by hand - Go me :)

* Instead of shallow frying why not try baking them. Either form into burger shapes of falafel like balls and cooked on a well greased baking tray ( I just give it a squirt with fry light) for about 20 minutes, until they're crisp

So there you have it a basic protein filled veggie burger that can be altered to suit you x Have you ever made a veggie or a bean burger? leave me a comment and let me know x