Recently, my son and I took a trip into the city to see Beetlejuice on Broadway (SO GOOD!). One of our favorite places to eat in the city is 5 Napkin Burger, which has THE most amazing veggie burgers I’ve ever eaten. When I got home I knew I had to try to make them myself, but there were SO many ingredients, so I went to the internet (as one does) for help. I found this recipe and decided to give it a try.
I couldn’t for the life of me find wheat berries nearby but I used bulgur wheat instead and I think they still came out pretty good!
I didn’t follow the recipe exactly because I planned to halve the recipe, which always results in interesting combinations of amounts.
I ended up making 2 batches with each batch containing:
1/2 cup cooked lentils
1 cup cooked bulgur
1/2 zucchini, shredded
4-5 button mushrooms, shredded
~1 cup shredded beets
~1/2 cup shredded carrots
1 cup panko bread crumbs
2 eggs
salt and pepper to taste
That looks delish! Bulgur was a great choice.
Wheat berries are usually Hard Winter Wheat seeds, the kind used for sprouting wheatgrass. I bet any cooked grain would work, kamut, spelt, whole oat groats (seeds not flattened), quinoa, barley, rice. Nom!
In fact, I started wondered why this was the type of wheat berry we used for sprouting at the sprout farm. Winter wheat is higher in gluten and lower in protein but I think maybe it makes better wheatgrass for juicing? Spring wheat might be more useful for eating, it’s pretty high in protein. You should be able to find either year round, look for organic if you can as wheat is a heavily sprayed etc crop. And I’d try it before buying a lot in case you really prefer another grain. Wheat, kamut and spelt are not my favourites to be honest.
The eggs in the recipe and the cheese you added make up for some of the essential amino acids missing in grains. Add some soaked or ground nuts/seeds to that recipe and it’s close to a complete protein. I will have to try it out on the fam and see what they think.
OH! One other thing I sometimes do with a carrot/beet based recipe like this is to juice the root veg and use the more dry left over pulp for cooking. Taking some of the liquid out can improve how the shape holds. And you get to drink the juice, yay! That’s the best part!
Root veg is surprisingly juicy! It’s a lot of work to do all that grating too. A juicer makes quick work of it.
You can also salt shredded zucchini to get it to release water, let it sit about 1/2hr, then press it. I do that for zucchini bread.
The zucchini is cooked before going into the patty. I also gave it a good squeeze! The beets are boiled before grating, which really helps, but they are still pretty juicy.
