Big, Thick and Juicy Veggie Burgers That’ll Satisfy All Your Burger Cravings
This is going to be a long post. We’ve been trying to perfect veggie burgers for a long time and we have a lot of information to share on the subject. If you want to skip over the text, Click here to jump straight to the recipe, or watch the video below. Scroll all the way to the bottom for the gluten-free version.
We’ve made some pretty good veggie burgers in the past, but we’ve never been 100 percent satisfied. Making a veggie burger that looks good and tastes good is not that hard to do, but we’ve learned that making a big, thick, juicy veggie burger that truly rivals a real hamburger is no easy task. We’ve tried dozens of methods, recipes, and techniques, but nothing has delivered exactly what we’re looking for… until now.
Our inspiration for these veggie burgers comes from the incredibly tasty burgers we’ve had at a few different food trucks and restaurants around the country. We’re not talking about your typical “health food” veggie burgers, we’re talking about burgers that are competing with real hamburgers, which means they have to look, feel, and taste as much like the real thing as possible – if not somehow better – to satisfy customers and keep them coming back.
That’s the kind of veggie burger we’ve been dying to have come out of our own kitchen. Again, it’s no easy task, but we knew from our own dining experiences it could be done.
Making Vegan Ground “Beef”
Ground seitan being combined with other ingredients to form the veggie burger mixture.
To really nail the texture of a hamburger, you have to start with a base that is as much like real ground beef as possible. We found that making our own seitan and grinding it in a food processor was the best way to make realistic vegan ground beef. With the right blend of spices, it looks, tastes, and behaves just like ground meat – at least about as close as it gets without having access to a lab, a factory, and a team of food scientists.
Perfecting the Patties
Ground seitan patties about to go in the frying pan.
Perfecting the patties was tricky. We had a suitable ground beef substitute but it wasn’t holding together as well as we wanted it to. Eventually we figured out the best way to bind the patties was by adding some extra wheat gluten to the mixture. The extra gluten turns into a connective tissue that holds the burgers together nicely while they are cooking. We also learned that par-baking these patties helps them keep their shape when they’re ready to go in the frying pan or on the grill.
Cooking the Burgers
A lot of people like to bake their veggie burgers – we’ve done it plenty of times – but in our experience, a baked veggie burger is never as good as a grilled or fried one. We could cook these burgers completely in the oven, but that would dry them out too much for our taste. That’s why we only par-bake them to help them thicken up, and then finished them off in a frying pan. Frying them allows us to quickly sear the outside without overcooking the inside.
Thick and juicy homemade vegan burgers with smoky garlic "aioli," cashew "cheese," and sauteed portobello mushrooms and onions served on a deli roll.
Ingredients
- 1&1/2 cups wheat gluten
- 1/2 cup nutritional yeast
- 1 tsp sea salt
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 2 tsp Italian seasoning
- 3/4 cups water
- 3 tbsp olive oil
- 3 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 2 tsp liquid smoke
- 2 1/2 cups ground seitan (gluten free option below)
- 1/2 cup mushrooms, diced
- 1/2 cup onions, diced
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp pepper
- 1 tsp Italian seasoning
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 3 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 2 tsp liquid smoke
- 3 flax eggs (3 tbsp ground flax + 9 tbsp water)
- 1/2 cup wheat gluten
- Get the recipe Here
- Get the recipe Here
Instructions
- Heat oven to 350 degrees.
- Combine wheat gluten, nutritional yeast and spices in a large mixing bowl.
- In a separate bowl, combine water, olive oil, soy sauce, red wine vinegar and liquid smoke.
- Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir until combined.
- Use your hands to knead the dough for a few minutes.
- Form the dough into 4 equal sized logs.
- Cover each log with foil, or place in an oven-safe dish with a lid, and bake for 30 minutes on each side.
- Once the seitan is done, remove from oven and allow to cool on the counter.
- In the meantime, saute onions in a bit of olive oil over medium heat.
- After a few minutes, add the mushrooms and garlic and saute until soft.
- Break the seitan into large chunks and pulse in a food processor a few times until it's very coarse, like cooked ground beef.
- Remove from food processor and add to large mixing bowl.
- Pulse the onions, mushrooms and garlic in the food processor a few times.
- Add to bowl and stir with a spoon.
- Add the rest of the ingredients, except the flax egg and wheat gluten and stir until well combined.
- Add the flax egg and again, stir until well combined.
- Add the wheat gluten and stir and once it's combined, use your hands to knead it a few times.
- Form the dough into patties and place on a parchment lined baking sheet.
- Put the patties in the fridge for 15 minutes.
- Bake them for 15 minutes.
- After they are baked, you can cook them in a pan over medium heat on both sides or you can grill them.
Notes
If you want to dress your burgers the same as ours, we used lettuce, tomato, onions, pickles, avocado, cashew cheese, and aioli.
Gluten-Free Version
If you can’t eat gluten, you can still make something similar to these patties. The video below from CookingWithPlants shows you how to make a gluten-free seitan roast. It won’t be quite the same as the seitan we use, but it should make a decent substitute. When you are forming the patties and the recipe calls for 1/2 cup vital wheat gluten, substitute brown rice flour instead, or any other gluten-free flour you like. For the soy sauce, simply make sure you choose a gluten-free brand. You can find a list of gluten-free soy sauce brands here.
Hey there! Amazing flavor in these burgers. But the texture was off. They were very soft and did not firm up at all. Should I increase the cook time in the oven? or add more gluten to the mix?