Recipe | Roasted Eggplant and Sweet Potato Quinoa Burger

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As promised, here's the recipe for the burgers I used for my burger-bar set up for me and Chris on Valentine's Day.

Yields 10-12 burgers, depending on how big you make them.

1 small eggplant, chopped
2 sweet potatoes, chopped
1 large white onion, roughly chopped,
1/2 cup quinoa cooked in 1 cup water
1/4 cup vegetable stock
1/2 cup old fashioned oats
1 tbsp paprika
2 tbsp chipotle hot sauce
1 tbsp spicy brown mustard
couple tbsp extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 350°F

Spread your chopped sweet potatoes on a lined or greased cookie sheet. Season with some olive oil, salt, pepper, and half of the paprika. Pop that in the oven for about 15-20 minutes. When the sweet potatoes start to soften up, remove them from the oven and add the chopped eggplant and onion to the mix. Season with some more olive oil, the remainder of paprika, salt, and pepper. Cook together for another 15-20 minutes.

While your veggies are cooking, prepare you quinoa - 1/2 cup dry quinoa to 1 cup of water (or vegetable stock). Bring to a boil, then simmer, covered, for 15 minutes.

When the sweet potato and eggplant mixture is cooked, remove from the oven and let cool for 5-10 minutes before adding to the food processor.

Once cooled, Add the veggie mixture to a food processor with the 1/4 cup vegetable stock. Pulse until the mixture is at your desired consistency. I liked mine to be slightly chunky, but this step is totall up to you.

Add the veggie mixture to a big mixing bowl. Throw in the oats, cooked quinoa, hot sauce, mustard, and some more salt and pepper. Mix together thoroughly and form into patties.

Now, you can either bake the burgers off in the oven, since it's already heated up. Or you can sear them up in a pan with some olive oil. If you choose the former option, they'll take about 10 minutes on each side in a 375° oven to get a nice golden brown color. On the stove, they'll take about 5 minutes on each side over medium heat with about a tbsp of olive oil.

Enjoy!

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Recipe | Spicy Roasted Eggplant and Chickpea Burgers

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1 small eggplant
1 15 oz. can of garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
a couple tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 scallions, roughly chopped
1/4 cup chili lime spiced cashews
1/2 cup quick-cooking or instant oats
2 tbsp chia seeds
1/4 cup vegetable stock
2 tbsp sriracha hot sauce (or your favorite hot sauce)
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tbsp onion powder
salt and pepper to taste

To start off these burgers, you're gonna want to roast your eggplant. I used a small one, but whatever size looks good at the grocery store will work fine. A larger eggplant will yield you an extra burger or two and you might need to add a little more of the spices.

Anyway, preheat your oven to 450° Fahrenheit, line your baking sheet with aluminum foil, and spray with non-stick cooking spray. Slice your eggplant in about 1/2 inch slices and line them on the baking sheet. Drizzle the slices with olive oil and sprinkle some salt and pepper on them. Roast them for about 5-7 minutes on one side, flip them, and then roast the other side for about 3-5 minutes.

While your eggplant is roasting, you can start processing your other ingredients. I have a really small food processor, so I needed to process everything in steps - that's how I'll write out this recipe. If you have a large food processor, go ahead and just dump all the ingredients into it and pulse away.

Anyone with a small food processor, here's what you can do:

Start off with the cashews - you want to get them to a crumbly consistency, but not like bread crumbs. Pulse them for 10-15 seconds to achieve this texture and then add them to a big bowl.

Next, you might have to do your can of beans in two steps. Just pulse it until the beans are mashed up a little bit. I like a chunkier burger, so I didn't process my beans for a long time. It's up to your personal preference though. Add your mashed up chickpeas to the bowl with the ground up cashews.

Take your roughly chopped scallions, oats, chia seeds, cumin, coriander, turmeric, onion powder, salt, and pepper to the food processor and pulse for 10-15 seconds, or until everything looks evenly combined. Add this mixture to the bowl. 

You can add the sriracha, or whatever hot sauce you chose, 1 tbsp of olive oil, and vegetable stock right to the bowl and bypass the food processor. Stir up all the ingredients to combine and evenly distribute all the spices.

At this point, your eggplant should be finished roasting  Remove the eggplant from the oven and turn the temperature down to 400°.

Go ahead and roughly chop up the eggplant - CAREFULLY since you just took it out of the oven and it will be hot! (feel free to let it cool off for a little while) - and then add it to the food processor. Pulse for 15-20 seconds, or until it's at your desired consistency. Add the eggplant to the bowl with all the other ingredients and give it one last stir and a taste to check for seasoning.

Grab a handful of the mix and start forming your patties. I was able to get 7 burgers when I made this. I just put the patties on the same baking sheet and foil I used to roast my eggplant - I just added a little more non-stick spray. Line your patties up and bake them for 7 minutes one one side, flip them, and bake for another 5-7 minutes on the other side. 

While your patties are cooking, you can get your burger toppings ready. I just served mine on some toasted organic whole grain bread with mixed baby greens and tomato slices topped with honey mustard.

Enjoy!

- Sam :)

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