My own vegan portobelloburgers

We went to the market (Vogeltjesmarkt) on Saturday in Antwerp and needed some portobellos. But the vendor offered us all portobellos he had left (which were 12 huge ones) for a small price, since he was going on holiday anyway. And so, we were ‘stuck’ with 12 gigantic portobellos.

We needed six to make burgers, in which the bread roll is replaced by portobellos, to cut on carbs (very good recipe of Jeroen Meus, by the way and vegan if you leave out the mayonaise). At first I thought about making dimsum with the leftover portobellos to put in the freezer, but then I started cutting and baking them and I thought ‘Well, I feel like making my own burgers’. And although I had some eggs of my parents’ chickens left, I wanted to try and make the burgers immediately vegan. So I tried the linseed (lijnzaad) egg-replacement. And it worked. I was so proud, ‘cause it was the first time I made vegan (even vegetarian) burgers from scratch without any recipe.

What you need (for 2 big burgers):

• 5 big portobellos (but I assume it will work with other mushrooms as well)
• 1 tablespoon of grounded linseed, mixed with 3 tablespoons of water (egg-replacer)
• juice of 3/4 lemon
• handful of fresh basil, chopped
• 2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
• 1 onion, chopped
• olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste
• maizena
• panko

Preparation:

Chop the portobellos in small cubes and while doing that heat a big pan with olive oil and the crushed garlic. As soon as all portobellos are cut, put them in the pan as well and let fry until brown and soft.

Put everything together in the blender, along with the fried portobellos and mix until pasty. Then you will have to feel: if it’s still very soft, you will have to add some maizena/panko already into the mixture and mix until a bit more solid (it does not need to be a dry paste, however, it can be moist).

Then you want to make 2 burgers (or 4 smaller ones) out of it, with your hands and then roll them into the maizena and panko (to get a little crust).

Put olive oil in the pan (and you have to be generous, so the burgers won’t stick to the pan) and let the burgers fry until golden. To reduce the amount of oil, just put them on kitchen paper for a while.

You can serve them just like you want: on a bread roll with special veggies or as a classic burger, as a meat-substitute with your potatoes and veggies …

YUM!