Homemade Veggie Burgers!

Thanks to Missy and her hoity toity big city newspapers on the interwebs, I've got some great new ideas for making homemade veggie burgers.  Here's my take on one of the recipes for Mushroom-Grain burgers.  I'm altering the recipe basically because I'm not grocery shopping until tomorrow, and these are the most similar items I have to the recipe in the article.

Here are the ingredients I'm using:

• Mushrooms
• onion
• garlic
• Brown Rice (instead of Barley--I would have preferred barley, but I used it all up...as I said--grocery shopping isn't until tomorrow.  I love cooking with barley.  It adds a nice meat-ish texture to things like chili.)
• egg
• Beans!  The recipe calls for chickpeas (which I really don't like) but I'm using navy beans (because I have them on hand.)
• Edamame (this is not in the recipe, but I'm adding them in for some extra protein and greenth.  I invented that word.  It means more greenness.  :)
• Parsley (fresh from my Aerogarden)
• Sage -- I have zero sage in this house.  Not sure why, or really what you use it for.  Chicken is my first guess or stuffing type thing.  I guess it hasn't come up for awhile...
• Shredded Sweet Potato (not pictured.)  this was an afterthought.

Cook the onions, add the mushrooms.  I'm throwing in the sweet potato shreds and the edamame at this point just to cook them a little bit.

 

Take 1/2 the mushrooms and put in a bowl with the rice/barley and the parsley.  Take the other 1/2 and throw in your food processor along with the beans and egg.  Smoosh it up.  Mix everything together.

This looks.  interesting.  The green bits are nice.  Once everything is mixed together it's pretty.  I guess I had my doubts just looking at the food processor mush.  This will be fine.

I am frying them in little balls rather than huge patties.  They do have a hard time sticking together, but the beans and the egg are the glue.  Just smoosh them back together if they fall apart.

Then it says I have to oven it.  I don't have fancy cookware, so I'm going to transfer the browned dealies to a baking sheet and finish them in 375 for about 10 min.  Well, 5 minutes, then put some cheese on top, bake 5 minutes more.  

That's the gist anyway.  Ok, so I just took mine out of the pan and they're nice and brown, but still really mushy/wet in the centers.  The baking must dry that out a bit.  I hope.  I had to re-shape some of them.  They're downright gooey.  Waitin to see where this goes...

Anyway, I do like the idea of using the beans in a burger.  Maybe chickpeas will end up in my pantry.  Maybe.

Here's an update.  I pulled them out of the oven, and they're a little bit more set, but still didn't seem done.  I am going to end up baking them for about 30 minutes total.  When they're done I'm going to let them sit on the pan for another few.  I hope that's not a huge mistake, but sometimes, you know--recipes are bullshit.  They just didn't seem done.

Ahhhh.....check it out!

Delish!  I'm eating mine with all the condiments of an actual burger and it's really really good.  Thanks again Miss Missy and her You Nork Times.

You Neek.