deluxe Tempeh burgers: deliver a healthy diner meal at home

Diner burgers at home

In an age of unprecedented convenience, how do you deliver a healthy diner at home? The kind that brings everyone to the table, keeps them there and brings them back again? Here’s one way: Deluxe Tempeh Burgers.

Rather than clicking the take-out app, hitting the ready-made shelf in the grocery store or dropping in for the local diner special, let’s spend an hour and hit a home run straight to the dinner table. The payoff for that hour is big if you compare it to the extra expense of having someone else deliver that unhealthy burger. I’m not just talking pennies here. This one is about making the most out of what you eat including the tastes and textures you crave. We’re just going to cut out all the unnecessary extras, compromises and background noise.  

Vegan burgers come home

I was completely taken in when vegan burgers as I transitioned from vegetarian to vegan to plant-based no oil eating. Those pre-made veggie burger patties were always in my shopping basket. And for good reason (so I thought). They were convenient, tasty and as it became more and more apparent, I craved them. The more kinds that appeared on the shelf, the more I tried.

And then I started reading the labels.

If I was going to keep feeding my craving for pre-made veggies burgers, it was probably a bad idea to read the label. That’s where I discovered that I was eating a lot of salt and fat. Why was I surprised? Salt and fat are the two ingredients that make food both palatable and addictive. Fat satiates us. It cons us into thinking we are eating a lesser amount of food, but in reality, most of those veggies patties are so nutritionally dense we’d have to eat less (like one bite only) to equal the platefuls of more healthy offerings we could eat if we just cut those extra additives.

Slow changes moving forward

It was a cautious path I traveled when I turned away from convenience to what I like to think of as more responsible eating. It was cautious because I needed to come up with new recipes that would deliver the same satisfaction as the purchased stuff, but that wouldn’t kill me in the kitchen.

If you make them yourself, you get controlled creativity.

The ingredient/flavor control making baked chickpea burgers, or samosa burgers or Mediterranean burgers was never lost on me. And all veggie burgers follow a simple recipe:

Grain or beans – veggies – binder – seasonings

Let’s apply that rule to tempeh burgers

Tempeh talk

If you’ve seen blocks of Tempeh and wondered what it is and more importantly what do with it, you aren’t alone. Tempeh, the bridesmaid to tofu, the bride in full white grab, is gaining popularity and thus more shelf space, but just like tofu, it can be subject to bad reviews. In part, that’s because of bad cooking practices.

Tempeh didn’t grab me by the taste buds the first time I tried it. The texture was substantial and ‘meaty’, however, the taste was strong and bitter. So, I had the opposite problem with tofu. Tofu soaks up any flavor you give it, but the is a texture problem that can be difficult to impossible to overcome. I even overcame the marinating time by blending it for the greatest plant-based bacon ever. A bit of experimenting later and I learned the value of baking it and finally crisping it (add link).

Bitterness away with ye

But tempeh presented a different challenge. I couldn’t marinate the bitterness away – at least to my taste. The texture was too firm for starters. That’s when I learned that it would be steamed or simmered. And that’s what changed my relationship with tempeh for good.

Making tempeh crumbles, for tacos, sauces, stews and for your burger base is nothing more than a matter of crumbling, simmering and draining well. If I’m not going to do any marinating, I usually simmer it in veggie broth with a tablespoon of Tamari. It’s honestly and autopilot thing now. I build the 20 minutes or so I use to simmer the tempeh right into my prep time. In the case of the burgers, in those 20 minutes, you can prep the onions, mushrooms, spices and even the burger fixings.

Pulse, mix and roll

5-6 pulses in the food processor for the tempeh, onion and mushrooms is a magic touch that makes tempeh burgers special. That little bit of processing will smooth out the bigger pieces while allowing the burgers to maintain texture integrity. The simmered tempeh will be moist, so take the time to press on it in the colander to get it as dry as possible. Once you get your pulse on, you will be in a better position to decide how much seitan you’ll need to add.

Hail Seitan (say-tan)

My binder of choice for bringing out the texture of the tempeh and giving burgers a bit of extra chewiness is vital wheat gluten – aka seitan. Seitan is found in bigger supermarkets and specialty shops. It usually comes in bags that look like flour, so that’s your first place to search for it. I’ve noticed a lot of homemade plant-based burgers using seitan as a binder.

Although you might find seitan next to the flour, there’s a reason it’s called ‘wheat meat’. Unlike flour, when seitan is mixed with liquid, even the liquid of our simmered tempeh, mushrooms and Tamari, it takes on a chewy texture (one might even call it meaty).

Consider this

And now a moment of caution. In my experience, it’s best to exercise restraint when using seitan. Don’t add so much that the dough becomes stiff with it. Otherwise, your final baked product – tempeh burgers can take on a hard, crusty-bread kind of texture. I find that for 8 ounces of simmered tempeh with 1 ½ cups of chopped mushrooms, ½ - 1 cup is enough.

You want your burgers to hold together enough to make patties that stay formed and keep their shape when placed on the baking tray. If the patties are a bit too moist, the worst that might happen is you need to bake them a bit longer. Personally, I usually take the entire 30 minutes to bake as I like burgers that are done through to the middle.

Baking versus frying

Full disclosure – I’ve never tried pan-frying tempeh burgers. My best advice if you want to try it is to fry on low, without oil (of course) and you may want to cover the pan after you flip them so that the middle cooks firmly. Once I try this method, I’ll update you on the results.

‘you’ time while the burgers bake.

Or possibly making some wonderful oven chips so your diner experience is even more authentic. Ah, tempeh burger and chips – made the way you want it, all in the comfort of your own home.

Final thoughts

Burgers – plant-based, pre-made, delivery, diner – I’m showing the love. And while I might be throwing major shade on those last three options, it’s because I have found the way forward to bringing a deluxe, diner burger home. And I’m not talking in a brown, greased stained paper bag. No compromises, just straight-up burger nirvana – without the side of guilt. Peace.

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