[HPI note: The New York Times ran two stories recently about how delicious Veggie Burgers have become in the last few years.]
They were the four syllables that used to have the power to make both carnivores and vegetarians cringe: veggie burger. If that has been your mental framework, it might be time to take another bite.
Across the country, chefs and restaurateurs have been taking on the erstwhile health-food punch line with a kind of experimental brio, using it as a noble excuse to fool around with flavor and texture and hue. As a result, veggie burgers haven’t merely become good. They have exploded into countless variations of good, and in doing so they’ve begun to look like a bellwether for the American appetite. If the growing passion for plant-based diets is here to stay, chefs are paying attention.
[Food critic Jeff Gordinier wrote
this piece: ]
Last week I found myself in a situation that many a cheeseburger die-hard might have scoffed at. There I was, standing in a kitchen in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, with Lukas Volger, 29, the author of “Veggie Burgers Every Which Way,” a cookbook that came out last year. To open my palate to the vast spectrum of veggie options, the exceedingly gracious Mr. Volger had decided to cook me three of his favorite recipes: one with mushrooms and barley, another with tofu and chard, and a touch-of-peanut Thai-style rendition with carrots.
He showed me why it’s important to fry the patties in an oiled pan, first, to get that crucial crispness, but then to finish them off in the oven so that they firm up without blackening. He talked about avoiding the mush factor; he talked about the usefulness of potato as a binding agent. Mr. Volger isn’t showy about it, but the guy knows how to cook.
Mr. Volger’s veggie burgers were not sad little Shake Shack replicants. They weren’t trying too hard to act like beef. They owned up to their garden roots. “This isn’t just an approximation of a meat burger,” he told me as I bit into one. “It’s an expression of a vegetable.”
And there is hope in that. When my cardiologist eventually places a firm grip on my shoulder and informs me that my lifelong cheeseburger reveries must come to a close, I shall not gnash my teeth in mourning.
[Finally, try a delicious veggie burger recipe you can find at the end of this article. ]