I am not in love with store bought veggie burgers. They’re all kind of dry and depressing, which I guess is something they have in common with processed meat products.
Inspired by How Sweet Eats
I found this smokey sweet potato burger on How Sweet Eats when a vegetarian friend was coming over for the second time in a row and I couldn’t make her my then vegetarian staple (Indonesian gado gado, recipe forth coming) again.
Make it vegan
I don’t know why there was an egg in there to begin with, so it’s now actually a vegan burger. And it’s the best vegan burger you’ll have. I also think it’s relatively easy to make and adjust if you don’t have all the ingredients at hand.
I used to use the butter beans as How Sweet Eats suggested, but they’ve started selling really nice bean mixes here that give a lot of additional texture to your burger. The one I used for this shoot is a mix of butter beans, chickpeas and kidney beans.
What do you eat with a smokey sweet potato burger?
I used to have this on a bun but it’s a bit carb-on-carb for me so I tend to just have the burger with some avocado and salad. When I serve this to friends I’ll add some garlic naan to make it look more substantial as a meal but in my opinion it really doesn’t need it and that space is better reserved for dessert.
If the yogurt roast garlic sauce isn’t for you I can recommend mayo, a basic guac, some decent hot sauce or all of the above.
Vegan Smokey Sweet Potato Burger
Equipment
- Oven
- Microwave, optional - see instructions
- Kitchen towel
- Large bowl
- Frying pan
Ingredients
- 1 head garlic
- 2 T - 30 ml olive oil
- 1 large sweet potato
- 7 oz - 200 g tinned beans of choice drained and rinsed
- 1/3 c - 40 g plain flour
- 1 T - 15 g smoked paprika
- 1 t - 5 g onion powder
- 1 t - 5 g salt
- 1/2 t - 2.5 g ground black pepper
- 1/4 t - 0.5 g ground cumin
- 2 T - 30 ml olive oil
- 2/3 c - 200 ml yogurt optional, use unsweetened if you're using non-dairy yogurt
Instructions
Roast the garlic
- Preheat your oven to 360° F/ 180° C and cut the tip off 1 head of garlic so all the cloves are exposed.
- Soak the head in 2 T - 30 ml of olive oil for 10 minutes before moving it to the hot oven and roasting for 30-45 minutes until the cloves are soft and gooey.
Bake your sweet potato: in the microwave
- Pierce 1 large sweet potato all over with a fork and place it on a kitchen towel in your microwave. Set on high and cook for 5 minutes, before turning over and cooking for another 5 minutes.
Bake your sweet potato: in the oven
- Preheat your oven to 425° F/ 220° C. Bake until soft, this should take 45-60 minutes.
Make the sweet potato burgers
- Allow the sweet potato to cool until it is manageable with your bare hands before scraping the flesh out of the skin.
- Place 1 c - 80 g of your beans of choice in a large bowl with the peeled sweet potato, 2 of the roast garlic cloves, all the spices and 1/3 c - 50 g of plain flour.
- Mix together well, but be sure not to break up the beans entirely so you get some nice textural differences in your burger.
- Leave the mixture to cool and solidify a little bit in your fridge for 1 hour or so. The mixture will stay gooey but should become a bit more manageable once it's cooled off a bit. You can omit this step if you're impatient and hungry like me.
Fry your burgers
- Heat a 2 T - 30 ml of olive oil in a frying pan. Make sure it's really hot before you take your sweet potato and bean mixture and form it into loosely shaped patties before dropping the burgers into the pan. No need to strive for perfection here, they will correct themselves a little as they fry. The mixture will be quite gloopy, but if your oil is hot enough the outside will crisp up and the patty will hold together quite well.
- Cook for about 3-4 minutes on each side, until golden and crisp.
- If you want, mix the remaining cloves of garlic with 2/3 c - 200 ml of yogurt and season to taste with salt and pepper to serve as a sauce with your burgers.
Notes
