A Burger for Vegans

I mentioned recently that I planned to make my veggie burgers from scratch for the 4th of July. It turned out to be a pretty easy, albeit somewhat lengthy, process. I'm going to share the recipe here, but first I want to talk a little bit about making gluten "meats".

Many of the meat analogs available commercially to vegetarians contain egg and/or dairy ingredients. While ovo-lacto vegetarians are fine with these ingredients, vegans are not. Many of the vegan choices are made with soy protein isolate, which is not necessarily much better for our health than the meat. Some products are made with tempeh, a fermented soy product, which is more of a whole food than the isolate-laden products. I personally have avoided the fermented soy products since discovering a bad allergy to tofu, so I can't comment on their quality.

You can make burgers out of beans, grains, and vegetables. I've got a great little cookbook with those kind of recipes, and you can find many recipes online as well. They are very tasty but not always entirely reminiscent of a burger made from meat. Depending on your reasons for eating a vegan diet, and whether you are serving vegan food to people who don't usually avoid meat, you may wish to create a more meat-like dish.

Gluten, the protein portion of the wheat grain, can make a good meat substitute when flavored and prepared properly. There is a portion of the population that is sensitive or allergic to gluten for which these products are not appropriate. However, for the rest of the vegetarian community, or others simply trying to reduce their use of animal products, gluten is a versatile and cheap way to make familiar dishes.


Making Gluten

The process begins with making gluten, often called seitan, from wheat. Now, for the purists out there, you can make gluten starting with wheat or white flour and going through a process of kneading and rinsing it under water until everything (the starch and the bran) but the gluten part of the flour washes away. I've never made it that way, partly because a bum wrist limits my ability to do much kneading and also because I hate to use that much water in the desert. If you are interested in doing it the hard way, though, just search online for precise directions. You won't find them here since I "cheat" and do it the easy way.


The easy way begins with Vital Wheat Gluten. You can purchase this in natural food stores or order it online like I did. This is not the same as high-gluten flour which is flour with more gluten than normal - great for baking breads but it won't make "instant" gluten. To use Vital Wheat Gluten, you simply mix with water and then cook it.

Quick & Easy Gluten
1 cup Vital Wheat Gluten
7/8 cup water

Mix until this forms a spongy dough. You can just do this with your hand.
Cook immediately, or for better texture, cover with warm water and let it sit for half an hour. Then drain and cook.


Cooking Your Gluten

There are different ways to cook gluten.

• Baking: I've never tried baking it, but you can if you want. Place gluten in greased loaf pan and bake for 45 minutes at 450 degrees. When done, slice or cube the loaf and boil for half an hour in a pot of flavored broth. Let it sit in the broth overnight to absorb more flavor.


• Slow-Cooking: I have not tried this method either. Place gluten in a greased loaf pan and cover with a flavored broth. Seal the pan tightly with foil and bake overnight in a low oven at 250 degrees. If you can get up midway and flip the gluten over, it will absorb the flavor more evenly.


• Boiling: Simmer your seitan in flavored broth for 1 1/2 hours. You can change the texture of the gluten, making it denser, by wrapping in cheesecloth before boiling. This worked well for the vegan corned beef I make for St. Patrick's Day, using this recipe and method.


• Pressure-cooking: Cover your gluten with 6 cups of flavoring broth in the pressure cooker and cook for 45 minutes. I like this method because it uses the least amount of energy for the cooking and I love getting a low gas bill each month. I could probably do the boiling method in the solar oven, though.

Flavoring Your Gluten

There are two different ways to flavor gluten. I've done both.

• Boil in broth. This is the method described above. This does not always result in as much flavor in the gluten as I would prefer. My gluten this weekend came out very flavorful but that's because I goofed on the recipe and only pressure-cooked it in 2 cups of liquid. I came very close to burning my gluten!


• Add flavor to raw ingredients. This is the method that Isa from Post Punk Kitchen uses in this popular recipe. It's also the way the vegan corned beef is made in the recipe mentioned earlier, which comes out very strongly flavored. This is my preferred method. Cooking the gluten can be done using the same methods as in the above list using a milder flavored cooking broth.

Got Beef Flavor?

To give plain gluten a flavor somewhat reminiscent of beef, try this flavoring broth.

Beefy Gluten Broth
3/4 cup soy sauce
2 tbs browning sauce*
1/3 cup nutritional yeast
1 tbs onion powder (or 1 large onion, chopped)
3/4 tsp dried sage
6 cups water

Combine in your pressure-cooker or pot, add gluten, and cook for indicated time.

Here's my gluten after pressure-cooking.

*Browning sauce
1 1/2 tsp blackstrap molasses
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup hot water

Cook molasses and sugar together, stirring constantly, over low heat until they caramelize to a dark brown color. Slowly whisk in the water and stir until well-combined. Store in the refrigerator and use in place of commercial browning agents. Only a small amount is needed for a sauce or gluten.


Grinding Your Gluten

After the cooked gluten has soaked in the broth overnight, it will have firmed up. Cut it up into cubes and pass through a meat grinder. I know it sounds odd to suggest that a vegetarian use a meat grinder, but I find these are handy kitchen tools for processing vegetables.


This is the Italian food mill I picked up in a thrift store for about $10. It works well for saucing tomatoes (and likely for cooked apples).


It produced ground gluten with a texture and appearance very similar to cooked ground beef.


If you aren't lucky enough to find one of these mills in your thrift store, hardware stores carry the Universal grinder, also good for vegetables, fruit, and gluten. I have not seasoned mine yet as the instructions call for passing suet through it. I want to avoid using real beef fat on it. Perhaps raw peanuts would accomplish the same seasoning?


Making Veggie Hamburgers

I made fake beef and squash burgers yesterday using a recipe in the Simply Heavenly! cookbook. They were pretty good, but I think next time I will move more towards what I used to make with the Gimme Lean vegan hamburger packages.

For those, I added a lot of ground vegetables (use a food processor) such as carrots, onion, celery, bell peppers, and mushrooms. For binding, I used rolled oats soaked in water plus cracker crumbs. These were mixed until a good burger texture was achieved and then formed into patties to be baked or grilled. I started making burgers this way long ago when I still ate meat as a way to reduce the amount of meat in the recipe while increasing healthy vegetables and grains in my diet. I continued with it when I switched to the soy-based meat analogs to reduce the amount of soy protein isolate I was ingesting. Plus, the veggies add flavor, moisture, and texture.


I know making vegan hamburgers from scratch sounds like a whole lot of work. It is a bit time-consuming, but it yields a nice hearty meal that is a real treat during barbecue season. If going to a BBQ with people who will be eating meat, it's also nice to be able to bring normal-looking food so that others will focus on enjoying your company rather than on grilling you about why you aren't eating meat.