Veggie Burgers Every Which Way – Beetroot Burgers

It was Matt’s birthday recently and I have a confession to make… One of his birthday presents nearly didn’t make it his way.

Matt and I both love cooking and we love awesome cookbooks. We also both love a really good veggie burger. I’m not talking those cheap frozen patties stuffed with peas, corn and carrot. Yuck. Even an unimaginative goat’s cheese burger fails to impress me nowadays. I need something more inventive, more interesting and more substantial. These burgers do exist in the veggie burger world but I’d never really made my own beyond using a Portobello mushroom as a patty and one fairly successful attempt at sweet potato burgers.

Then when hunting for a cookbook for Matt, I came across Veggie Burgers Every Which Way by Lukas Volger.

The book has received rave reviews online so I was pretty confident that it would be a winner but when the Amazon package arrived and I flicked through the pages, I seriously considered keeping the book for myself… Bad, Sarah, bad! But seriously, every page looked amazing and it was hard not to want to hold onto it!

The burger recipes are split into sections based on the patty type; there’s ‘Bean, Grain and Nut Burgers’, ‘Vegetable Burgers’, and ‘Tofu, Seitan and TVP Burgers’. But making it even better,  it’s not just burgers – there are recipes for a bunch of different sides from Sweet Potato Fries to Raw Kale Salad with Apples and Candied Walnuts, as well as toppings and condiments from Quick-Pickled Red Onions to Pomegranate-Sesame Sauce, and even a selection of burger bun recipes. You really could make your entire meal from scratch!

I was so tempted to keep the book (and make Matt jealous with it!) but alas, I didn’t buy it for me,  so instead I gave myself a little talking to, slapped myself on the wrist for being selfish and wrapped the book up instead! I’m hope in the end Matt liked the book as much as me…

So yesterday, after our lunch plans involving an amazing loaded vegan hot dog fell through (we seriously underestimated the popularity of The Mighty Fork), we wanted a bun-based dinner instead and Veggie Burger’s Every Which Way made its kitchen debut.

Deciding on which burger to make wasn’t the easiest task but in the end, we were drawn to the vibrant colour and summery-ness of the Beet and Brown Rice Burgers. The patty is made using fresh beetroot, kidney beans and brown rice as the base and is fairly simple to make. The book advised it would take 20 minutes to prepare and cook the burger… it lied. To be fair, this may be partly due to the slight brown rice fail we experienced (forgot to cook rice before preparing the burgers, completely ruined rice, had to rush out to supermarket to buy cheater’s 2-minute microwave rice… Thank god for Tilda!)

The burgers need a good charring to stick together and this gives them a delicious smoky flavour. We served ours with cucumber, avocado and sweet chilli sauce and made roasted sweet potato wedges (my recipe, not Volger’s) and a simple green salad for sides. It was absolutely delicious and super-filling! There was plenty of leftover patty mix, so tonight I had a plain patty without the bun and served it with a green salad and vegan potato salad (recipe to come here). Very happy belly two nights in a row!

The book has a great mix of vegetarian and vegan burgers, with suggestions for sides and toppings for each patty. I’d say about half the burgers are vegan and many could probably be veganised using egg replacers. Almost all the sides and toppings are vegan, though unfortunately, none of the buns seem to be.

I was really impressed with our first burger attempt and am keen to invite myself around to Matt’s house again for Veggie Burgers: Round Two.