ASDA has come out with a new range of vegetarian just-add-water mixes. The range includes burgers, sausages, falafel and nut roast.

When I first spied them in the store, I perused the ingredients list and noticed the presence of soy. It was not specified if this was genetically modified or not, so I called the ASDA help line on the back of the packet to enquire. Unfortunately, despite a 12-minute phone call at my expense, the customer “service” rep could not tell me if the soy was genetically modified or not. I asked if ASDA had a blanket policy on GM foods, but the rep was clueless on that as well. He took my contact details and promised a response within a couple of days, which (weeks later) I am still waiting for. Zero out of 10 for customer service on that one, ASDA!

We bought a couple of the packet mixes anyway, with the idea that we’d return them if it turned out they contained GM soy. After several days, and having received no response from ASDA, I searched the internet for the information. Turns out ASDA does have a GM-free policy, which applies to all of their own-brand food ingredients, but does not extend to  “the feeding of GM derived materials to livestock”. No GM worries for vegans, then!

Back to the food. The mixes sell for 78p, but are currently on offer at two for £1. Depending on the mix, they make from two to four servings each, so are really good value, and are a great idea when you’re pressed for time and want something quick and nutritious.

The first one in the range we tried was “Chargrill style meat free burger mix”, and we were not disappointed.

Preparation couldn’t be easier, as you simply add water to the dry mix and let stand for 10 minutes. You can then form the mixture into burgers. The directions called for making eight small burgers, but I made four “normal”-sized ones instead. I made the burgers using my burger press, but you can also form them by hand. They were then pan-fried until golden on each side. I fried two of the burgers; the remaining two were frozen uncooked for another meal.

I was pleased that the burgers held together nicely in the frypan. Both Mr Thrifty and I loved the savoury, delicious taste that was a bit reminiscent of fried onions.

When the time came to use the frozen burgers, I partially thawed them before frying, as I didn’t want them to overbrown before being hot inside. This worked beautifully, and were indistinguishable from the freshly-made burgers.

I highly recommend the new ASDA Chargrill style meat free burger mix as a quick, convenient, delicious and thrifty purchase. Reviews of other products in this range are forthcoming!

I’ve finally discovered the secret to great bean burgers.

A lot of beans burgers are too soft and mushy, and squish out of the bun when you’re eating them. (Remember: mush burgers aren’t us.)

You can make a bean burger firmer by adding wheat gluten, but I must admit I’m not a fan of bean burgers with added gluten. They tend to be dry and the texture somehow just doesn’t seem right.

The solution to mushy bean burgers is an easy one. Don’t make them too thick, coat them with cornmeal and make sure you cook them long enough to form a nice crunchy crust. I’ve found the best way to achieve this is to first pan fry them in a small cast iron griddle, then place them, griddle and all, in the oven to finish them off.

These butterbean burgers are delicious and have just a bit of heat from the jalapenos. Thanks to happy vegan face, whose recipe I adapted.

The original recipe called for saltine crackers, which aren’t available here in the UK. However, I’ve found that Doriano crackers — available in supermarkets — are very similar to saltines, and work beautifully in this recipe. I also added ground raw cashews for a protein boost, as well as a bit of arrowroot to help bind the burgers.

You can either use a 400g (14oz) tin of butter beans, or cook your own from scratch. If cooking from scratch, 110g of dried beans will make about the equivalent amount of a tin.

Spicy butterbean burgers

1. Saute red pepper, onion and garlic in olive oil for 10 minutes, until vegetables are soft.

2. Meanwhile, mash butterbeans. Crush crackers into crumbs (I use a blender). Mix together butterbeans, cracker crumbs, ground cashews, nutritional yeast and jalapenos.

3. Add the cooked vegetables to the bean mixture and combine well. Stir together the arrowroot and water, and add this to the burger mixture. Add salt and pepper to taste and combine well.

4. Form into five burgers, pressing mixture firmly.

5. Spread cornmeal on a plate and gently press each burger into cornmeal to lightly coat.

6. In a heavy frypan (I use cast iron), gently pan-fry burgers until golden on each side.

7. For an extra-crunchy outside, place burgers, frypan and all, into 160C (325F) oven for 20 minutes.

Makes five burgers.

These meatless hamburger steaks are really amazing. The texture is EXACTLY like what I remember hamburger being like, and Mr Thrifty concurs. The taste is most delicious, though the flavour could be tweaked to make it more meat-like if you so desire.

The hamburger steaks are a combination of TVP, gluten, minced veggies and seasonings. They’re formed into steaks and steamed, then pan-fried. They hold together very well, and would probably work great on the barbecue.

A thinner version of these would make fab burgers as well.

A note on ingredients: Marmite lends a rich, salty taste. If you don’t have it, try adding some veggie “beef” bouillon powder instead. The gravy browning is optional, but adds a nice dark colour.

Vegan hamburger steaks

1. Bring 100ml (1/2 cup less 1 tablespoon) water, Marmite and gravy browning to a boil in a small pot. Stir in TVP, off heat, cover and let stand for 15 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a heavy skillet and saute the onion, mushrooms and red pepper for 10 minutes, until softened.

3. In a large mixing bowl, combine TVP with cooked vegetables. Add soy sauce, tomato puree (tomato paste), steak sauce or barbecue sauce, Worcestershire sauce and 50ml (3-1/2 tablespoons) water. Mix well, then stir in ground oats and nutritional yeast.

4. Sieve the gluten flour over the wet mixture and combine well.

5. Divide mixture into four portions and shape into oval steaks. Wrap each steak in baking paper, then in aluminium foil.

6. Bring water to boil in a pot that has a steamer insert. Steam steaks for 40 minutes over gently simmering water, switching positions halfway through (bottom steaks on top and top ones on bottom). Check water level regularly to ensure the pot does not boil dry and add boiling water as necessary.

7. When steaks have finished steaming, let cool. Unwrap and saute until lightly brown.

Makes four hamburger steaks.

I know I’ve been neglecting my blog somewhat, but I’ve been a busy little beaver in the kitchen.

I created the most amazing vegan-hamburger-steak-type thing which had just the perfect texture and a savoury and delicious flavour. And on the first try as well!

I also made some awesome vegan pepperoni sticks:

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Not to mention some very tasty butter bean burgers with a lovely crunchy crust (which all good bean burgers must have):

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AND, I also tried my hand at homemade crisps. It would be truly dangerous if I made these on a regular basis:

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Recipes will be in forthcoming posts!

But that’s not all…

I took a look in my freezer a month or so ago and realised there were still a couple of drawers full of fruit, waiting patiently to be made into wine. I’ve been making a gallon a week since then and so far have brewing: blackberry-raspberry; plum-blackerry; cherry-cranberry; elderberry-blackcurrant; and plum-blackcurrant-blackberry. YUM!

I also invested in a brand-spanking-new SoyQuick 930P, kind of the Rolls Royce of soya milk makers. Woohoo! I’ve made not just soya milk but also hemp milk, and will soon be experimenting with homemade tofu. Very exciting!

And I’ve bought a few exotic and somewhat hard-to-find ingredients: carrageenan, agar-agar and locust bean gum. These have been used to make a delicious garlic pâté (which was supposed to be cheese, but ended up with a consistency and flavour like pâté), as well as the aforementioned pepperoni.

Not only that, but we’ve been starting to prepare the allotments for the new growing season, and Mr Thrifty will be utilising his exceptional garden DIY skills to make raised beds for our second allotment. It’s a new and better design (hopefully) than the ones that are on our first allotment.

And if that weren’t enough, we’ve also joined a food co-op, and now can buy all kinds of delicious organic food at wholesale prices! Our first order has come in and we’ll be picking it up tomorrow. Yay!

Stay tuned, cyber-friends, details of these new ventures will be coming soon!

Edit: I had one of these burgers for lunch, reheated from frozen, and it totally fell apart in the pan. Argh. I still need to work on the cohesiveness. It tasted fantastic, though.

I had another go at making the nutty wild rice burgers I’d first made a few months back.

This version held together better, and the tweaks I made to the seasonings worked well. The chewy rice is a nice contrast to the crunchy nuts and seeds.

This probably won’t be my final version of this burger, but because I’ve had a couple of requests for the recipe, I’m posting this latest version.

Enjoy!

Nutty wild rice burgers

* For two cups of well-cooked brown basmati / wild rice blend, start with 70g (3/8 cup) raw brown basmati plus 40g (3 tablespoons) raw wild rice, cooked in a generous amount of boiling salted water for about 50-55 minutes, then drained.

1. Heat the olive oil in a heavy skillet and saute the onion and mushroom for 5 minutes, until softened. Add garlic and continue to cook for another minute or two.

2. In a large mixing bowl, combine cooked vegetables with rice, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and walnuts. Mix well.

3. Add vegan cheese and breadcrumbs and mix again.

4. In a small bowl, whisk together soy sauce, besan and arrowroot or cornflour (cornstarch). Add to mixing bowl and combine well.

5. Divide mixture into four portions and shape into burgers.

6. Saute in a bit of olive oil until lightly browned on each side.

Makes four burgers.

I made these burgers a few days ago, and they were delicious. Crumbly and mushy are the two biggest problems with veggie burgers, and these were neither.

These burgers held together fine in the pan. The texture wasn’t mushy (as bean burgers often are), but they were a bit soft, so I will be tweaking the recipe next time to add some firmness, perhaps with masa harina, or possibly substituting oatmeal for the stale bread crumbs.

The recipe is based on one from The New Vegetarian Grill and can be viewed here.

I served them with fresh salsa, whose Spanish name, pico de gallo, means rooster’s beak. The salsa is also excellent with corn tortilla chips. Be sure to use very tasty, ripe tomatoes.

Pico de gallo (fresh salsa)

1. Combine all ingredients in a bowl.

My usual way of making tofu burgers is to pan-fry, then marinate and grill, a slab of tofu, as with Teriyaki tofu burgers.

Another way to make tofu burgers is to mash the tofu with other ingredients, then form into burgers. I’ve tried this type of recipe before, and although the resulting burgers have been tasty, they’ve fallen apart in the pan. No way could you grill or barbecue them.

Although some people like to add gluten to soft burgers to firm them up, I have to admit that I am not enamoured of burgers using gluten as a binding agent. I’ve tried several recipes which use that technique, and the burgers always seem dry and just somehow not very appealing.

However, I have now discovered the secret to tofu burgers that are firm enough to grill or barbecue. Thanks to Sunset magazine for creating this recipe. The only modification I did was to use a homemade vegan substitute for the egg.

You must use a food processor to blend the ingredients into a homogenous sort of dough. (Don’t try a blender; it won’t work.) This dough, which looks far too soft to make burgers, never mind firm burgers, magically firms up when gently pan-fried. After which the burgers can be a) eaten; b) grilled; c) barbecued; or d) breaded and re-fried. I’ve only tried a) myself.

These tofu burgers could be made gluten-free by using gluten-free breadcrumbs.

The original recipe didn’t say to grind the cashews and sunflower seeds before adding to the other ingredients, but I did this anyway. I’ll try it their way next time.

A note on substitutions: if you are going to use a different mixture of nuts/seeds, you may need to adjust the recipe. I tried a variation using all cashews, instead of half cashews and half sunflower seeds, and the mixture was a softer and needed more breadcrumbs to make it firm enough to handle.

About the egg substitute: I came up with a vegan egg substitute that uses gram flour (aka chickpea flour, besan) plus a little arrowroot, mixed with water. It works a treat in this recipe: when cooked, the besan and arrowroot bind the other ingredients together. If you’re not familiar with using besan in recipes, be aware that it has a bit of a odd taste when raw (which disappears when cooking). Keep that in mind if you are tasting the uncooked dough.

Grillable tofu burgers

1. Make the egg substitute: Whisk together the besan and arrowroot. Add two tablespoons of water and whisk until smooth. Add the additional tablespoon of water and whisk again.

2. Combine all ingredients, except oil, in a food processor until smooth. The dough will form into a ball. It will look and feel too soft to make burgers, but do not despair, as it firms up a lot when cooked.

3. Heat up a heavy cast-iron skillet over medium-low heat. Add a bit of olive oil and spread it around the pan. You can now either form the mixture into burgers with your hands (lightly oil your hands to keep the mixture from sticking), or simply plop dollops of the mixture into the frying pan and shape into burgers in the pan. Make three or four burgers depending on how big you want them.

4. Cook, turning once, until lightly browned on both sides and firm to the touch, 10 to 12 minutes total.

Can be served as is, grilled or barbecued.

Makes three or four burgers.

Tonight we had burgers and chips with salad, a favourite in the Thrifty household. I love trying new veggie burger recipes, and decided to try one using rice and nuts.

The burgers were made with wild and brown basmati rice, pecans, pumpkin seeds, mushrooms, onions and a few other things. They were really delicious, with a great texture: chewy from the rice and crunchy from the nuts and seeds. No mush-burgers here! They held together fairly well in the pan, although they crumbled a bit whilst being inhaled eaten.

I’m not going to share the recipe just yet, because I need to tweak it to improve the cohesiveness. But you can have a peak at the recipe I used for inspiration here, though I omitted some things and added others, so it’s really not that similar.

On Tuesday, Mr Thrifty and I went to London. We fed our tummies with some great grub.

For lunch we had Mexican burgers from Red Veg in Soho. Veggie burgers with salsa, guacamole, jalapenos, vegan mayo, lettuce. Spicy hot and super yummy.

With fries and onion rings.

Then we bought some sushi from Japan Centre (near Piccadilly Circus) to have at home.

Inari, cucumber hosomaki, avocado roll, spicy fried tofu roll, inari ura maki roll. I loooove sushi. Gotta learn how to make it.

I made these veggie burgers a couple of weeks ago from a recipe I clipped out of a magazine eons ago. (Yes, I am a compulsive recipe collector.)

I was drawn to the recipe because it used mushrooms (which I love), and also courgette (zucchini), which I have an oversupply of at the moment. (Our tomatoes may all be getting blight in this our third rainy summer in a row, but at least the courgettes are growing like mad.)

The recipe originally called for an egg and 1/4 cup of ricotta cheese. I used a bit of arrowroot dissolved in water for the egg, and tahini thinned with water for the cheese.

The burgers turned out great! They didn’t fall apart in the pan, like veggie burgers are prone to do, and had a nice moist texture and delicious flavour. Mr Thrifty and I liked them so much that I made them again a few days later.

Enjoy!

Marvellous mushroom burgers

1. Heat olive oil in a heavy skillet and saute onion over medium heat for 5 minutes. Add garlic, saute another minute. Then add mushrooms and courgette (zucchini) and saute until excess moisture has evaporated. Add steak sauce, basil and oregano and set aside to cool.

2. In a large mixing bowl, combine wheat germ and oats.

3. Put tahini into a small bowl, and stir in two tablespoons of the water until smooth. In another small bowl, mix remaining two tablespoons of water and arrowroot.

4. Add sauteed vegetables to wheat germ / oat mixture and mix well. Then add tahini and arrowroot mixtures and mix thoroughly. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground pepper.

5. Divide mixture into five portions and shape each one into a burger. Chill for 30 minutes or more.

6. Saute burgers in a bit of oil until lightly browned on each side.

7. Serve in buns with all the fixings. Or naked on the plate. They are scrumptious either way.

Makes five burgers.