EDIT: Wow! Thank you for all the detailed recipes guys! That's too kind meow-hug

  • ReadFanon [any, any]
    ·
    5 months ago

    Sure can!

    First off, a trick - get a small piece of the bean burger that you're making and either fry it or just microwave it to cook it through and then taste that for seasoning. One of the two major ways that veggie burgers fail is due to a lack of spices and seasoning.

    The other major way that bean burgers fail is due to a lack of binder, which makes them crumbly or they can even simply fall apart.

    I'm a big fan of using wheat gluten/seitan as a binder personally but I think the besan flour is just about as good as a binder, plus it's cheap and versatile - you can make Burmese tofu out of it and it's useful as an egg replacement in a lot of baking too. The runner up in this goes to quick oats or oat flour.

    You'll find plenty of recipes out there but I'd look for ones that feature those ingredients as a binder, or you can sub Besan for wheat flour in recipes and it'll improve the overall texture and nutritional value of the burgers.

    You have to moderate the amount of moisture in your burgers too. I am lazy/overwhelmed so I'd lean towards using garlic and onion powder with sweet paprika as the flavor base tbh - it requires less fiddling around with frying the ingredients, you don't need to worry about introducing excess moisture, there's no risk of spices being chunky and causing your burgers to break apart like with fresh onions etc., and you can adjust it to taste easily. If you have some celery seed or celery salt I'd put a sparing amount in too but that's optional.

    From there it's about adding in other seasonings and spices to make the burger hit the flavour profile you're looking for - generic herby, Italian, Greek, Mexican, Indian... you get the gist - although this is optional too.