These devilishly good looking raw garden burgers are creating some recipe requests on both facebook and instagram, so I’m here to deliver!
I first wanted to grab permission from Linda Szarkowski with Green Spirit Living in Chicago IL. She is a wonderful person and an amazing teacher and happened to be the teacher of my 2nd curriculum at Raw Gourmet Institute in Chicago. She nourishes the Chicago area with her live food boxes and raw food classes. If you are in the Chicago area, definitely take advantage. We first learned and devoured this burger when Jeremy and I took her All-American Comfort Foods class back in July/August of 2010. The burgers were delicious that day as well as the 2 other times I’ve made them.
I haven’t always liked the raw burgers, sometimes just like the raw breads, there is just too much flax meal in it for my liking. While I love flax and flax meal – I tend not to like it dehydrated or at least in large quantities, dehydrated. This recipe is different though. It is truly really good. This is also a good ‘basic’ burger that has a lot of flavor but could also be a jumping off point if you wanted to add additional spices, like cumin and chili powder for a taco styled raw garden burger or sun-dried tomatoes and basil tomato seasoning for a marinara garden burger. I love recipes like that.
I’ve forgot to mention thus far that this is one of those “I take 2 days, recipes” but it’s an easy 2 days. I soaked my walnuts and sunflower seeds together overnight, rinsed them in the morning and plopped them in the dehydrator on mesh sheets – they didn’t mind the mingle. They only needed 4-5 hours of dehydration time and then I was able to start the recipe. You might be able to go straight from soaked to the recipe but I haven’t tried it. Let us know in the comments how yours turns out, if that’s the route you go.
I ran out of carrots at about 1 cup, so I used shredded zucchini to sub for the remaining 2 cups of carrots. It worked out great – I thought beets might even be really good too.
Raw Vegan Garden Burgers and Mock Sour Cream and Chive Dip
These recipes make 12 delicious burgers and about 1 cup of mock sour cream and chive dip. If you're like me and won't eat all the dip, think about baking or boiling potatoes to make an almost raw potato salad, adding some chopped onion and egg if you prefer. If you want to keep it on the raw side, chop up some parsnip or jicama to sub in for your cooked potatoes. Yum!
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups walnuts, soaked and dehydrated
- 3 cups sunflower seeds, soaked and dehydrated
- 3 cups grated carrots (about 3 large carrots)
- 1 cup minced celery
- 1/2 cup minced yellow or red onion
- 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
- 1/4 cup lemon juice (about 1 1/2 lemons)
- 1/4 cup ground golden flax seeds
- 1 teaspoon poultry seasoning
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt
- 1/8 teaspoon cayenne
- 3/4 cup cashews, soaked 30 minutes
- 1/4 cup water, plus additional to thin, if needed
- 1 1/2 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1/4 teaspoon sea salt
- 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 tablespoon minced fresh basil
- 1 tablespoon minced fresh dill
- 1 tablespoon minced fresh chives or green onion
Instructions
- Place sunflower seeds and walnuts in a food processor and grind to a fine meal.
- Transfer to a mixing bowl, and mix with the remaining ingredients. Place the mixture back into the food processor and process until well-mixed but still a little chunky. You may need to do this in batches.
- Using 1/2 cup per patty, form 12 large patties (I used my metric wonder cup - it is AMAZING!)
- Place on a dehydrator tray lined with a teflex sheet, and dehydrate at 105F for 4 hours. Flip onto a mesh sheet and continue drying for 6-8 hours, until desired texture is achieved.
- Serve on a lettuce leaf with Mock Sour Cream and Chive Dip or ketchup or barbecue sauce.
- Place the water, cashews, lemon juice, garlic powder, onion powder, and salt in a blender and process until smooth. Stop occasionally to scrape down the sides of the blender jar with a rubber spatula (if you have a BlendTec twister jar, this will be done in 30 seconds, no scraping required).
- Add the chives, basil, and dill and pulse briefly to mix. Chill for at least 1 hour before serving. Stored in a sealed container in the refrigerator, this will keep for 5 days.
As I mentioned in the recipe, I used my Metric Wonder Cup to make the burger shapes. I also learned this tip from Linda and it makes the perfect size and shaped burgers. This is a great tool to have in the kitchen any time oooey gooey things are called for in recipes, like peanut butter, molasses, date paste, and more.
To use the wonder cup (almost sounds like a bra or birth control – lol), you pull out the clear part of the cylinder until the measurement you need is lined up with top of the white base, for the burgers it was a 1/2 cup. Next pack in your ingredient with a small spoon or spatula, once it’s full turn it upside down and hold it close to the teflex sheet and push the white base with one hand while holding the clear cylinder in your opposite hand. Depending on the tackiness of your ingredient, it should slide right off.
I did all the burgers at once and then flattened them, you could use the bottom of a glass, a measuring cup, or even a dough cutter (I also use mine to scoop up chopped veggies and scrape clean my cutting board).
The sour cream dip is super easy to whip up and can be catered to how thin or thick you like. As I stated in the recipe the twister jar made it super easy – like less than 30 seconds – if you’re using a regular blender or food processor it may require extra run time or water, but it will do just fine.
Random Bits:
- I love poultry seasoning and in case you’re not familiar with it there’s no poultry or bullion in it, it’s merely spices that are commonly used with poultry, savory ones. Sometimes thyme, marjoram, savory, rosemary, onion powder, parsley and sage (you can make your own here). And it smells like stuffing!! yum 🙂
- These burgers would be great crumbled or cut over a salad, a filling in a collard wrap, used in a nori roll, etc
- You can bite into these burgers or break off a bite without them crumbling to bits – love that
- Garlic and onion powders add more of a ‘cooked flavor’ feel to raw dishes
- Skip the dehydration and use this as a pate
Enjoy!! xoxo
Ooooh! These look good. I will definitely be making them
Awesome! I always like to hear that 🙂