Food Friday: Homemade Veggie Burger Sandwich!

We eat veggie burgers around here.  I am still trying to make one that works as far as flavor, texture, ease of construction, and enjoyment.

This is the one I made this week.

This picture was an open-faced sandwich that I had to start eating with a fork.  It was delicious!  The layers were: toasted one hundred percent whole wheat bread, smear of Homemade Balsamic Mayonnaise, one Roma tomato sliced sort of thin, slice of sweet onion, Homemade Veggie Burger, sauerkraut on top then sprinkled with Montreal Steak Seasoning.  It was so good and stuck with me for hours.

Here is how I made the veggie burger.  I am sorry I don't have a really specific recipe just the method, but the method worked.

We had some leftover squash soup, some leftover rice glop (my term for rice and other ingredients that have become a more or less solid mass since I failed to stop the cooking in time), some leftover cooked pinto beans.

Started heating our cast iron skillet on the stove over medium heat then made the veggie burger mixture.

In a large bowl I placed the very flavorful squash soup--about 2 cups of it, 1 1/2 cups of the cooked rice, and 2 cups of cooked pinto beans. I used a potato masher to smush them up until I was satisfied with the texture.  Some of the beans were still mostly whole.  At this point I added about 3 Tablespoons of leftover thick pizza sauce, about a teaspoon of Montreal Steak Seasoning, and a good big glug of Worcestershire sauce. Then I threw in about 2 cups of old-fashioned rolled oats. I mixed these all together very well.

By this time the cast iron frying pan was hot so I added a Tablespoon of coconut oil and let it melt.  Using a 1/2 cup portion scoop, I scooped four mounds of the veggie burger mixture into the pan, pushing down on each mound with the back of the scoop to make a nice neat round burger about one-half inch thick.  I let them cook, still over medium heat, for 2-3 minutes or until I thought they were solid on the bottom. I then flipped them, cooked them longer on the second side then served to Dear One along with French fries. I had some mashed potatoes and salad with mine.

The upshot:  these taste really good.  When they came off the frying pan they were too soft for my Dear One's palate but he did think they tasted good.  This was for lunch.  At supper time I got the two leftover ones out of the refrigerator and found that they had become much more firm. Yay!  When I warmed up one for my own supper (Dear One did not want a repeat...usual story there...) it softened up again but still worked as you can see on the sandwich photo.

There was enough of the "batter" to make four more veggie burgers the next day using a smaller scoop, which was quite large enough.  I felt justified in eating two of them!  After all, what could be wrong with beans, rice, oatmeal, and squash?!

This is still not the perfect veggie burger (especially since I don't have an accurate list of all the ingredients in all the components) but is on the way to getting there. Something about the oatmeal firms them up, I think.