For the second time, I tried making "smoky" beetroot and bean based burger patties on the weekend. (It's the use of smoked paprika that gives them that flavour.) The recipe I followed this time is here.
The taste is pretty nice, and it's interesting, because I am pretty sure it's a psychological association of the colour of red with meat which gives the brain the impression that a beet burger is going to be more substantial and filling than some other forms of vegan or vegetarian burger.
But - as with a previous attempt, using a different but similar recipe, there is a problem with getting home made veggie burgers to stick together in a similar way to meat burgers.
This seems to be a well recognised problem - see this article Tricks for Making Veggie Burgers That Won't Fall Apart, for example. The trouble is, none of those suggestions sound very convincing to me.
I am sure the problem comes from the hard to avoid fact that frying (or baking) the patty makes the semi cooked vegetables inside release steam/water, which loosens the whole thing. I doubt egg works, as I have never found it helps much with salmon patties, which can also suffer structural integrity issues.
It was suggested to me yesterday, in a discussion which went on for far too long in the dog park, that perhaps the answer would be xanthan gum, which I didn't realise you could use in baked products as a thickening agent.
I also wonder whether the common ingredient you see on a lot of the imitation meat products you see lately - pea protein (or pea protein isolate) - itself binds somewhat when cooked. Now that I look around, one other veggie burger suggest wheat gluten - so maybe just adding flour or cornflower does help? Not sure how it would affect the taste, though. (As a side note, I also see coconut oil in a lot of fake meat products now. I can imagine that could help in taste and mouth feel too, so maybe it's time I start just experimenting with my own additions to a veggie burger recipe.)
I suspect that reader Tim might have an idea about this. Help me, please.
Update: because Google knows what I want to know, I found that Youtube suggested a Canadian video which showed a chef making a vegan burger with all the usual suspects (beans, lentils, chickpeas, mushrooms, spices) but also oats and - I think this may make the difference - tapioca starch.
That sounds plausible to me - it would avoid the possible floury taste of wheat flour or cornflower.
Someone who watched the video guessed at the quantities:
1 cup - Black Beans
1 cup - Chickpeas
1 cup - Lentils 1 cup
Mushrooms (cooked) 1/2 cup
Rolled Oats 1/4 cup
Beets (Shredded)
1/4 cup - Nutritional Yeast
1 tsp - Tapioca Starch
1/4 tsp - Salt 1/4 tsp - Pepper 1/8 tsp - Chili Powder 1 tsp - Parsley 1 tsp - Rosemary
I think there was more tapioca starch than that.
Sounds worth a try...
3 comments:
You should try my wife’s veggie burger recipe she invented recently - plump up some pearl barley in cool water overnight, and chuck in some tofu, grated beetroot, caraway and egg. Roll it in sesame seed and fry. :)
Can any veggie replace the wonder that is animal fat?
Tell me about it's structural integrity, Tim. :) Because that sounds like it would have a fairly high water content, and I think that's the enemy of structure integrity.
And no offence, but it sounds like that recipe needs some spicing up a bit.
I think coconut oil may go some of the way of meeting the role of animal fat.
By the way, do you have any experience with this "nutritional yeast" powder that seems big in vegan/vegetarian cooking now? I suspect it may help with adding umami flavour to a vegan burger, but I could be wrong.
Yes, umami and of course saltiness, the salt maybe is added to preserve the yeast (but also, clearly, to increase flavour). It can be quite nice and useful.
The veg burger - which sticks together well enough, held by the egg - doesn’t need much spice; the strong flavour is the beetroot and caraway.
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