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Quinoa Burgers

Dinner, Lunch, Recipes, Vegetarian

These crunchy-on-the-outside, creamy-on-the-inside, quinoa burgers will tempt even the most avid meat eaters to devour them in an instant!  You are free to change up the seasoning to suit your taste, but I prefer them with an Asian twist.

I find it really handy to cook a bunch of quinoa in one go and keep it in an airtight container in the fridge to have on hand throughout the week. Toss it into broth for a filling soup, make a salad, pancakes or other side-dish, and of course, my favorite, these burgers!

Quinoa Burgers

Serves 3-4

Ingredients

  • 2 cups (400 gr) cold cooked quinoa* 
  • 2 large eggs
  • sea salt
  • 1 Tablespoon Thai red curry paste
  • 4 Tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro (coriander)
  • 2 green onions, finely chopped
  • 60 grams feta cheese, finely crumbled
  • 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
  • grated peel of 1 lemon
  • 4 Tablespoons rice flour or cornstarch
  • sunflower oil for frying
  • greek yogurt
  • butter lettuce leaves
  • 2 limes, quartered
  • sweet chili sauce

Instructions

  1. In a large bowl, mix the quinoa with the eggs and a pinch of sea salt.
  2. Stir in the curry paste, cilantro, green onions, feta, garlic, and lemon peel.
  3. Stir in the flour – you can always add more if the mixture seems too wet.
  4. Form full tablespoons of the mixture into about 12 patties.
  5. Cover the bottom of a large non-stick frying pan with sunflower oil and place over medium heat.
  6. Once the pan is heated, fry the burgers for 8 minutes on each side, until golden brown, turning carefully.
  7. Serve them with yogurt, sweet chili sauce, lettuce leaves for wrapping, and a squeeze of lime juice.

NOTE:  Even if you don’t need to serve 4 people, it’s worth making this entire recipe and these burgers reheat beautifully.  You can store them in the fridge or freeze them.  To reheat, put them on a baking tray lined with bake-proof paper and place in a 170℃/350℉ oven for 10-15 minutes until warmed through.

*How to cook quinoa:

First, rinse it really well – and by this I mean:  put it in a fine-mesh sieve over a similar sized bowl, cover it with lots of water, lift out the sieve to strain, repeat several times. This will remove its coating of saponin, which makes it taste quite bitter, soapy, and just plain vile!

Cook it just like rice:  2 parts water to 1 part quinoa.  Bring salted water to a boil, add quinoa, bring to a boil again, cover, turn heat to low, cook for 15 minutes.