Creating Garden Veggie Patties At Home

By Peter Turner


Most individuals love a good cheeseburger, hamburger or chicken fried steak. There are now vegetable alternatives of these items in many grocery and health food markets. While this is the case, most are often quite expensive in comparison to making garden veggie patties at home.

As with traditional foods, some recipes are better than others. In all cases, there is a base mixture and a binder. Once this mixture has been made, individuals can add a variety of sauce and spice for more flavor. By using a binder such as an egg or egg alternative in the mix, these burgers and steaks often fry up beautifully without falling apart.

One of the best recipes calls for equal parts oats, rice and lentils along with a binder. After which, individuals can add a number of vegetables such as onion, bell peppers and greens such as finely chopped spinach, mushrooms or both. If desiring to make faux chicken fried steak, eliminate the vegetables, freeze the patties for 24-48 hours, then dredge in flour and fry in about 1/4 to 1/2 inch cooking oil in a shallow non-stick frying pan.

Most grocery stores and markets sell a variety of meat alternatives. Whereas, most health food stores now offer several vegetable seafood alternatives. As these seafood alternatives are far more difficult to recreate than veggie burgers or chicken alternatives, most prefer to purchase rather than recreate these items.

For those who can afford to buy these store bought versions, it is often easier and takes far less time to prepare. Others, who can not afford many of these high priced alternatives may want to attempt making these and other items at home. When it comes to sausage, the recipe is basically the same as home made vegetable burgers, just add a touch of black pepper and about two tablespoons of sage to the mix.

When it comes to chicken alternatives, these items can be used in more than just sandwiches. For example, to make a faux fried chicken salad, simply cut up one or two patties into cubes, then add to a garden or other lettuce based salad. One can also make lettuce wraps with these and other ingredients simply by crumbling the cooked patties then adding condiments and vegetables as desired.

Professionals and home chefs alike love to use different spice blends when cooking each batch of these items. While contents are often similar, each serving will have a different taste than the last. Some great spices that can be added to the mixture include teriyaki or soy sauce, maple spice powder, seasoned salt and others.

Storage and freezing are an important part of the process. For, while the patties can be cooked right away, it is less likely each will fall apart if fried while frozen. Many home chefs now use store-bought containers left over from other items to store these meat alternatives. One of the most important aspects of a container is that it is air tight once sealed to avoid freezer burn.




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