Healthy Food Choices: Homemade Veggie Burgers

I’ve been meaning to try the homemade veggie burger recipe from the Hungry Girl cookbook for about a year now, but only this weekend did I finally get around to giving it a try.

Now, I was a little skeptical about these because they contain a lot of onion and peppers, and while I like those for flavoring, I’m not usually real big on them as main vegetable ingredients in any dish. but I was surprised. I liked these – enough to eat them three times over the weekend!

The original Hungry Girl recipe is called “Oatstanding Veggie Patties” and can be found on page 72 of the Hungry Girl cookbook. But, because it calls for Fiber One cereal (which I don’t have), I chose to adapt the recipe a bit to use ingredients I have on hand.

Here’s the recipe for homemade veggie burgers that I came up with based on the original Hungry Girl recipe:

1/2 cup old fashioned oatmeal (not the instant kind) soaked in 1/3 cup boiling water

1/2 cup of mashed pinto beans (instead of Fiber One)

1 cup chopped onions

1 cup each of chopped yellow and red bell peppers (you can use green too, I just happened to have yellow and red) – so in all you’ll have 2 cups of chopped peppers

1 cup chopped button mushrooms

1/2 cup finely shredded carrot

1 egg (you can use egg substitute if you prefer)

2 teaspoons soy sauce

1 teaspoon salt

black pepper to taste

minced or chopped garlic to taste

Instructions:

Basically just mix it all together, then form into balls and put on a plate lined with wax paper to rest.

Let rest in refrigerator for at least an hour.

Drain any excess fluids carefully.

Preheat griddle or pan with olive oil

Place ball of mixture in pan, and press flat with spatula. Cook for 4-5 minutes on each side or until done.  Flip carefully as they tend to come apart if not fully done on one side.

Serve as you would any burger, or use as filling for a tortilla wrap.

This made 7 burger patties for me, which I ate over three different meals. I just kept the uncooked patties in the refigerator until I was ready to cook some, then drained off the excess moisture and cooked up the ones I wanted. Worked well.

They were very moist and flavorful. But don’t hold together well, which for me was okay. But I think next time I’ll try adding some of  Bob’s Red Mill high fiber cereal to emulate the Fiber One’s ability to soak up more of the moisture

Enjoy!

…Shannon

P.S. If you don’t have a copy of the Hungry Girl cookbook yet, try to check it out from the library or you can pick up on Amazon new or used below. It’s full of great recipes and tips for eating well without a huge amount of calories and fat.