Mushroom Walnut Burgers | Meat-free Burger Recipe

On this episode of How to Make Dinner, we're making the best veggie burgers I know how to make. These are my favorite veggie burgers in the whole world. And I'm a big veggie burger fan and I'm not a vegetarian. So it's one of those things where like, I've been known to order a veggie burger with bacon because I just really, really like veggie burgers when they're good. But there are a lot of bad veggie burgers out there. That's for damn sure. So today I'm gonna show you how to make my favorite veggie burger, which is a mushroom and walnut burger. And we'll get, we'll talk a little bit more about the semantics around burger a little bit later in the episode. All I have is some onion, garlic, some walnuts and some mushrooms. That's kind of the base. And then later on we'll add some black beans as well as some breadcrumbs and an egg. But it's pretty straightforward, pretty simple. To start things off, I'm just gonna throw in the walnuts into this food processor. And then also into the food processor, I'm going to add this other stuff. So I'll just peel this onion real quick. Everything just needs a rough chop because it's going to get chopped quite well in the food processor. Garlic, I'm just gonna smash. The old peel and smash method. And mushrooms, just a rough chop. And everything's going in raw, as you can see, but we're going to cook things in a minute here. And in this situation I would definitely use a food processor over a blender, only because we don't really want things to get pureed smooth, we want them to be chopped. And food processors are very good at chopping, whereas blenders are very good at, as you might guess, blending. I should get, there's gonna be a quiz at the end, okay? All right, so this actual recipe will be up on howtomakedinner.com, by the way, with all the full amounts and everything. So that should be helpful. All right, so I'm just gonna kind of pulse this. And notice I put the walnuts in first, because I kind of want them to get a little bit better access to the blade than everything else, because I do want them to be chopped a little bit finer. But I don't want to blend them ahead of time, I don't want them to be like a paste, but I just want them a little bit well chopped, so. You might have to kind of move things around in here, but actually this looks pretty good already. So what we have is a pretty well chopped, not pureed mixture. That looks about right to me, so I'm happy. So I have a saute pan here on my new flat top. We're gonna use this flat top later for actually cooking the burgers. This is on like medium high. I'm not gonna wash this yet, because we're gonna use it again. So this is gonna fry for about seven to 10 minutes. I'm gonna add the salt now, because that'll help kind of pull some of the juice out of the mushrooms and the onions. So that's a teaspoon of salt. Crank this up a little bit. And the deal here is we're not trying to totally get all the liquid out of this, but we're trying to get some of the liquid out and kind of get the flavors really starting to develop. All right, so this mixture, the mushrooms, the walnuts, the onions, and the garlic has been cooking down for, it took about seven or eight minutes. And what happens at first is like all the water comes out and then it starts to evaporate. And then it starts to look like it's kind of concentrating a bit. You don't want it to get too dry at this stage, because you do need some kind of moisture and juiciness left in the burger. So this is about right. It's kind of like a pasty mixture and it smells really, really good. It smells like mushrooms. So all I'm gonna do now is start to let that cool. And while it's cooling, I'm gonna take a half a can of black beans and grind it up a bit, because this is gonna add some nice substance to the patty. And it's just a coarse chop. I don't want it to become super smooth. I want it to have a little bit of texture. One of my biggest pet peeves with veggie burgers is when they basically just taste like dip in patty form, like a hummus or something in patty form. Like it just doesn't do it for me. I want a little bit of like bits, you know? So that's ground up just enough and I'm gonna dump it into the mushroom mixture. And this is gonna help it to cool down a little bit faster too. Also into this mixture, I'm gonna put two teaspoons of this stuff. Worcester sauce, Worcester sauce. I'm going Worcester. You do kind of have to let this cool down a little bit more than I'm allowing it to, because you're about to put an egg in here and you don't want it to cook. So let's just pretend that this is cooled a little bit more. Into this mixture, we're also gonna dump 100 grams of breadcrumbs. Whoa, it looks like a lot of breadcrumbs. And then that's gonna help it cool down even more so that it's probably safe to put the egg in now. And then that whole mixture is just gonna get mixed together and then we're just gonna chill it for a while until it firms up and then you can make patties out of it. And I might just get my hands involved here. Maybe just one hand. Hot tip, if you really want it to cool down faster, you would have transferred it out of the hot pan that it was in. The things we learn yet never learn, right? So you can see the consistency is really, really nice. It's like you can form it into a patty. There's no way it's gonna crumble. It's very kind of wet, but it's dry enough that it's not a big mess. Like you can shape it. And this is also, it's still hot right now, so it's gonna firm up a little bit more as it cools. So I'm gonna put it in the fridge and I'm gonna pull out the batch that I made earlier so we don't have to wait. How cool is that? This is not the most beautiful looking thing, but this is the batch I made earlier and to cool it down faster, I pressed it into this kind of casserole dish, which like the thinner it is, the faster it'll cool. And it makes about six patties. So what I did earlier was just divide it kind of with my hands so that I had a rough guideline of how to shape them. And now we can make burgers out of this. Hot griddle. This is my brand new thing. I'm pretty excited about it. Here's the thing about burgers, all kinds of burgers. I don't care what kind of burgers you're talking about. So many people make them really, really thick and I don't like thick burgers. I like a thinner kind of like toothsome, nice burger that's like balanced with everything else around it. You know when you just bite into this big, tough patty and it's like, there's no flavor on the inside and it's just hard to eat. So anyway, I like this size. I don't know how much this weighs, but this is like a nice patty to me. And it's not gonna shrink like beef does cause there's no like extra fat that's gonna come out of this. But yeah, that's a nice looking patty. Just drag it over there with some oil. I'm just gonna make all of these right now. Why not? So there's a thing happening right now in the United Kingdom. It might be in all of EU actually, where they're trying to make a law that you are not allowed to call something a burger unless it has meat in it. And I think it's the same with sausages and other like meat related words like bacon. Like you can't call it veggie bacon, you have to call it like veggie strips or something. And with burgers, you can't call it a veggie burger, you have to call it a veggie patty or something. Which I think is kind of funny because like to me, to me a burger is a ground up mixture that's formed into a patty and eaten with a bun. And there have been chicken burgers and salmon burgers all this time. And they're somehow allowed to be called a burger, but a veggie burger isn't. What I will say about chicken burgers and salmon burgers though is I personally, I'm not a culinary linguist or anything, but I personally believe that if it is just like a chicken breast put on a bun, it's not a burger. I think that's a sandwich. And same with salmon, if it's like a filet of salmon on a bun, it's not a salmon burger, it's a salmon sandwich on a bun. I do think a burger needs to be formed into a patty. So it needs to be like ground up or chopped up finely and pressed into a patty. I'd love to hear your opinion on that. I wanna start a firestorm of opinions here, people. Okay, so these are all cooking, that's great. One of my favorite things about this veggie burger recipe is that there aren't a million ingredients in it. So you can definitely spice it up however you want. You can add different seasonings, you can add some herbs into the mix, but this on its own is just really nice and flavorful. And it's just pretty simple, isn't it? There's like barely any ingredients. So I'm just gonna cook those for maybe four or five minutes on one side. Ooh, that looks good. Oh, look at that. That looks like a burger. Like not even veggie burger, it looks like a meat burger. That one could have waited a bit. What did I put on next, this guy? Okay, another hot tip. Whenever you're grilling or griddling anything, start in one corner and work your way methodically in order so that you don't lose track of which one you put down first. I feel like I've talked about that before and then I just did the opposite of that. So nobody's perfect. I love these because the walnuts, the walnuts add so much fat and the mushrooms add so much juiciness. So they actually feel juicy, like there's juice coming out of them. It's great. Okay, now it's time to figure out what we're gonna put on these burgers, how we're gonna assemble them. So it's totally personal taste. You could caramelize some onions, you could caramelize some more mushrooms if you wanted. You can make a special sauce. You could go like, you know, Moroccan burger and make like a parsley kind of like harissa yogurt and turn that into a sauce. I think we're just gonna have them like classic burger style tonight. I have a bit of a array of toppings here. I've got some ketchup, mayo, homemade mayo. You've seen the video. I've got Dijon mustard because I love Dijon and just some lettuce, tomato and onion. And I'm gonna grill the buns. Do you want cheese on yours, babe? Yeah? Okay, and we're gonna put cheese on ours. Throw those buns down to be grilled. Move this guy over. If you make a big batch of these, which I think you should. I mean, this recipe makes six, but it's a good idea to double it. Or if you're only gonna eat one or two of them, you can totally freeze the leftovers. Just shape them into the patties and then put them in between like parchment paper or wax paper or something and pop them in the freezer and they'll be ready to go for you any old time. I'm just gonna pop this lid on them to try and melt the cheese a little bit better. I'm gonna assemble these burgs now. I like ample mayo on my burgers. I'm kind of in the mood for Dijon mustard today. And a bit of ketchup because I'm an addict. This is not like a world's most beautiful burger competition, by the way. Maybe lettuce on the bottom. Bottom lettuce. Okay, the cheese isn't fully melted, but I'm not gonna wait any longer because I'm hungry. What do you think? Pretty good? All right, so there's our burgers. These are gonna be very delicious and I'm so excited to eat them. Mushroom and walnut burgers with whatever you want on top. These veggie burgers are super simple and really, really juicy and flavorful and they just hit the spot. I hope you give them a try and let me know how it goes. All right, that's it. We'll see you soon. Thanks for watching. Mm. That's a great burger. This is really good. Oh my God, it's so good. It really is. Mm.