Buckwheat and Black Bean Burgers

My sister was staying with us last week and I served up an array of salads, including my Buckwheat, Apple and Walnut Salad (you can find the recipe here). I love the nutty, chewy, firm but fluffy texture of buckwheat, and it suddenly occurred to me that the consistency would lend itself very well to a vegan burger.

So I went ahead and threw together a few ingredients that I thought would work well. The result was surprisingly good, everyone loved them!

Buckwheat is gluten-free, low on the glycemic scale and high in protein, so it’s a staple food item in our cupboards. These burgers are particularly great if you need to avoid soya products and nuts but still want to make burgers that offer a solid but juicy bite.

I’m avoiding gluten at the moment so I substituted a burger bun for iceberg lettuce leaves. I started with a layer of hummus (you can find my hummus recipe here, except I used a chopped red capsicum instead of sun-dried tomatoes and added a teaspoon of beetroot powder into the mix too), the burger, some chopped avocado, some sliced tomato seasoned with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper, and sliced brown onion fried in coconut oil. It was delicious! My children ate theirs in brown buns and arranged their own layers, which they always enjoy.

To make the burgers:

Take one 500g packet of Roasted Buckwheat and cook it according to instructions.

Next:

Combine 4 tbsp of ground chia seeds with ½ cup of water and set aside

Then, combine the following ingredients in your vitamix/food processor until they form a smooth paste:

1 tin of black beans, drained and washed

1 tbsp of nutritional yeast

½ bulb of peeled garlic

1 red onion

1 tsp of cumin powder

2 tsp of turmeric

2 tsp of sea salt

2 tsp of organic apple cider vinegar

2 tsp of paprika

1 tsp of beetroot powder

2 tbsp of organic virgin coconut oil

½ cup of fresh parsley

½ cup of fresh coriander

Put the contents into a bowl and add the cooked buckwheat and the chia/water mix (which should have taken on a gel-like consistency). Thoroughly combine.

Next, add the following to the owl and mix well:

3 cups of finely diced white mushrooms (approx 18 mushrooms)

¼ cup of ground flax seeds

Then shape the burgers:

Either grease a baking tray or line it with baking paper.

Take 2 heaped tbsps of the mixture at a time and put it in the baking tray, flattening the top and neatening the edges into a burger shape.

Put in a preheated oven on gas mark 6 and cook for 15 minutes. Then flip them over and cook for a further 15 minutes. Leave in the oven for a little longer if you’d like a bit of crunch on the edges, but be careful not to burn them.

This recipe makes 12-13 burgers. Here’s a picture of my most recent batch before they went into the oven. They hold their shape well:

Enjoy!