I finally made a veggie burger that doesn’t fall apart!

And the secret ingredient is…. Thinly sliced sauteed onion.I’ve been on a bean burger kick for a few weeks, and it didn’t matter how much of any extra “binding” agents I added in, the burgers would inevitably smash out the sides of the bun when I bit down.So I got to thinking, how does ground beef keep its shape? And I think it’s because muscle fiber is just that – fiber. The muscle is a bunch of little strings that get all knotted up and hold the fat particles in place, and then once they’re heated, the fat and muscle expand and contract at different rates, which tightens up the knotted lattice of the burger patty.So how to replicate it? To maximize string length, I took a big onion, sliced it into super thin rings, and then cooked them down on high heat until they were pliable. Then for flavor and some more stringy-ness, I took some baby Bella mushrooms and similarly sliced them into “strings” by pulling off the stems and slicing them to matchstick length and thinly slicing the caps, then cooked them down. (And the mushroom cap slices kind of hook around on either end, so that probably helps the structure)From there I just copied J Kenji Lopez’s black bean burger recipe – 2 cans of beans baked until mostly dehydrated, an egg, mayo, bread crumbs, salt pepper, crushed cashews, chilli in adobo sauce, crumbled cotija cheese.And hot damn, you can just man-handle these burger patties and they keep their shape.I hope this helps people going through the same struggle! via /r/vegetarian https://ift.tt/ALmyorx