Vegan Burger Experiments #1
Elevate a simple burger by simply smashing or infusing some extra ingredients! This is Vegan Burger Experiments #1.
So recently I’ve been watching and reading a lot of the hamburger historian George Motz. He introduced me to the Oklahoma Onion Burger which is definitely in my top 5 Burgers. You essentially slice some onions super thin, then smash them into a burger, then when you flip the burger, the onions get flash fried. It’s quite glorious.
So I got to thinking, what else can we smash into a burger? And then I started wondering about what other ingredients we could infuse into a burger patty as well. And so I went out back to my griddle and got to cooking!
For these burgers, there isn’t really a recipe. I simply got around 2.5 to 3 oz of plant-based meat and either smashed something into them, or I added about 1 oz of another ingredient directly into the patty and smashed it. The sky is the limit here, you can really experiment to your heart’s content!
This might have been my favorite burger! All you need to do is grate some vegan cheese from a block (texture and taste is superior to pre-shredded), add about 1 oz of it to about 2.5 oz of plant-based meat, and mix it together. Smash the burger on the grill and in a few minutes, you’ll see that the cheese that hits the griddle will get fried and crispy, while the cheese on the inside gets melted and gooey. It really is amazing!
Condiment ideas: I would maybe add pickles, mustard, and some diced onions, but you don’t need much on this one!
This one was also pretty dang amazing! It’s literally the same as the Onion Burger but we’re using jalapeños instead of onions. For either I recommend using a mandolin to slice the onions or peppers, it’s more precise, faster, and easier.
Condiment ideas: mayo, chipotle mayo, sour cream, pico de gallo, hot sauce, really anything you’d put on a taco would work!
This is just what it sounds like! I diced up some vegan bacon (by All Vegetarian, if you’re in the States it’s the best vegan bacon you can buy, go HERE if you wanna try some. This isn’t sponsored, they are just the best). You might be able to use my rice paper bacon recipe, but I tried to make Bacon Jam with it. The bacon just melted so I need to run some tests before I can give a full endorsement!
This one is great too, you get bacon in every bite and you don’t gotta worry about biting into a slice and pulling it out all at once!
Condiment ideas: definitely mayo or some good old fashioned burger sauce!
This is similar to the Inside Out Cheeseburger only we are smashing shredded cheese into the burger! You basically totally ensconce the patty in fried cheese!
Condiment ideas: Mustard, Pickles, Onions, Mayo!
This one was also fantastic and I definitely want to experiment with it more! You just blend in some Soyrizo (which is vegan chorizo) and smash it! The soyrizo is a bit more fragile than Impossible or Beyond so take more care with it! I wanna top it with some Just Egg and make a Breakfast Burger with it!
Condiment ideas: mayo, sour cream, chipotle mayo, pickled jalapeños, pico de gallo. Anything you would put on a taco or burrito would probably work!
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I was so excited about this but my burgers were a disaster. I attempted the “inside out” cheese burgers. I cooked them in a pan. I let the pan heat up until water drops danced on it, I smashed the balled up 3oz burgers and didn’t touch them for 3 minutes. By then they were fused solidly to the bottom of the pan. The first batch was garbage. Had to use excessive force to get them unstuck from the pan.
So I heated up a different pan – an allegedly non-stick pan. Same thing, waited for it to get hot, smashed the burgers, didn’t touch them for several minutes… completely stuck to the pan. Like, they became ONE with the pan.
After that, I just dumped the rest of the onions in and browned the remaining Impossible ground into a kind of sloppy joe type deal. Incredibly frustrating and costly experience for me. What the heck am I doing wrong?
Hey sorry to hear that! It doesn’t sound like you were using a truly non-stick pan, or it’s no longer non-stick. I don’t typically do smash burgers in a stainless steel pan. I prefer carbon steel or cast iron, and they need to be seasoned well for it to work. I’ve been planning to revisit this so I’ll go through and make some more notes for this kind of issues!
Thanks for the reply – I’ve been watching your videos for quite a while, got your cookbook for Christmas last year. Or two years ago? I don’t know, it’s been a while. I rarely make burgers because the Impossible ground is so expensive and there are four of us (two teens) in the house. To adequately feed my family with burgers requires about $20 worth of Impossible. Unfortunately about half of that got burned to the bottom of a couple pans tonight. Perhaps it’s time for a new non-stick.
I do also remember a tvp burger recipe you made, I’ll give that a try, might be less expensive. I really want to get this smash burger thing down, I think my kids would really like them.
Hey thanks for the support all these years!!
Yeah smash burgers with Impossible can be tricky, I mean even with animal meat they can be too.
A good non-stick is a good fail safe, and you can use some parchment paper in between your spatula to make sure it doesn’t stick to the spatula too, will definitely revisit this and make a more detailed post. There should be more info on my Shake Shack post too, thanks again!