Chipotle Veggie Burger

Here is the best, IMHO, recipe of veggie burger for my fellow vegetarians. With a real chipotle pepper, quinoa, beans and corn, it is full of flavors, healthy alternative to your regular burger! Who knows, it may convince you to quit eating meat .. ;)

Blog's Category: My Own Fast and Easy, Vegetarian

Intro

I really like my Black Bean burgers from Costco. Really. I like them very much. Even my carnivorous husband accepts them as a temporary substitute for a meat entree. That's why when I decided to use leftovers of cooked red quinoa for a quick homemade veggie burgers, the level of expectation was already pretty high. I needed my burgers be better than Costco's.. Otherwise, why bother, right?

Guess what.. I've got it! My burgers turned out great, and my biggest and the most trusted tester, my son, approved it and rated with a biggest score possible :).

Some of the most rare ingredients such as "chipotle in adobo sauce" or red quinoa can be substituted or omited, but in general, the recipe is easy and relatively quick. 

For a small can "Chipotle in Adobo", look in an international, most likely Mexican, section of your grocery story. 


What is it?

This veggie burgers is a healthiest mix of vegetable proteins, beans and quinoa, with corn. Flavor boosters are granulated garlic, granulated onion and chipotle pepper. Binding agents are eggs (optional), corn flour and flour.

Taste Description

Chipotle pepper gives a great deal of smoky and spicy flavor to this really delicious burgers. Not overly but rather pleasantly sweet beats of corn add another dimension to a rustic taste of beans and quinoa. Texture deserves praise on its own - quinoa gives an outer crust awesome crispy crunchiness, while keeps inner texture rich and toothy; half-smashed beans are creamy and chewy at the same time and whole corn kernels like a bits of jewel here and there.

How to Serve/Store

Cook all your burgers - they can be kept in a fridge for a week or so. Note that it's better to re-heat leftover burgers in a toaster-oven or in a skillet with a tiny splash of olive oil to recreate that magnificent crispy outer skin.

Serve burger on a burger bun or, as below, on a toasted bagel, smudged with mayo (mixed with a splash of sriracha chile sauce), add some sweet onion feathers and cilantro leaves. Regular burger add-ons are welcomed - tomato slice, pickles, avocado wedges, etc.

I also built go-to wraps, stuffing cold burgers, split in half, next to the long slices of mozzarella, inside of flour tortilla, with some cilantro leaves, for a perfect lunch.

Chipotle Veggie Burger 

For a generous batch of about 15 burgers:

• 1 lb dry pinto beans, cooked (or 3-4 cans of canned beans, drained thoroughly)
• 1/2 lb red quinoa, cooked 
• 1 pack of frozen corn ( about 3 cups)
• 1/2 small can of Chipotle in Adobo, blended with immersion blender
• 1 tbs granulated garlic 
• 1 tbs granulated onion
• 1 tsp salt (use less if using canned beans)
• 2 eggs 
• 3 tbs all-purpose flour
• 2 tbs corn flour

- In your largest mixing bowl, roughly mash beans with a potato masher leaving some beans whole, some smashing into a paste. Add remaining ingredients and mix everything thoroughly. 

- As a pilot run, I like to cook tiny 1" patty first, in a microwave, to figure out if seasoning is right on. Do it also to get your perfect burger! Make adjustments if needed.

- To shape burger, take a generous amount of mix and, with your palms, form, first, round ball, then smash it gently into a patty about 3/4" thick.

- Cook on a preheated to a medium-hot skillet, in a generous amount of olive oil, on both sides, to the golden brown crust. 

- Enjoy!



Notes

- If you can't find Chipotle in Adobo, try to use generous amount of a smoked paprika in a combination with a ground black pepper. 

- Regular quinoa can be used instead of red.

- Adding corn flour to a mix, supposedly, makes crust crunchier. But if you don't have it replace with a same amount of all-purpose flour. The same applies if you, vise versa, don't have regular flour but have a corn flour (or rice flour) on hands. Purely intuitively, I think that combination of regular flour and corn flour is ideal, though :)

- Omit eggs if you don't eat them. "Structural integrity" of your burger may be compromised, but not drastically, I think.



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IN PICTURES

Here is my mashed beans. For convenience, you can use canned beans.. I just had some low-grade dry pinto beans that I could use only as mashed..

Let your burgers to get a good crust underneath before turning them over. Otherwise you are risking to break them in half. If you fill they done't hold well enough. Add some more flour or corn flour into your remaining mixture.

That is my favorite flipping tool - small (it looks big on this picture) spatula, metal flipping part is very thin and slides easily under the patty..

mnyam (it's yum in russian :))