Cheese & Onion Quorn Burgers

36/70

This recipe comes from the 'Little Chefs' section of the book, right at the back, containing 3 recipes you can make with the kids. I can see why this one would appeal as it involves getting your hands mucky and shaping the burgers which is quite good fun (although I did it without any help from any children!).

We were really impressed with these burgers and despite the fact you can pick up pretty good quorn burgers fresh or frozen and cook them so conveniently quickly, I would consider making these again if we were having a veggie friendly barbeque. This is because they are so fab tasting and feel like a gourmet burger.

When we were in Berlin last year we visited a couple of their specialist veggie fast food shops (I so wish we had more of these in the UK), two which are worthy of a specific mention were Yellow Sunshine in trendy Kreuzberg and Vego Foodworld in Prenzlauer Berg. Both serve fantastic vegan burgers, wraps, kebabs, pizzas and all sorts of other tasty junk food (!) which can be eaten on site or taken away.....these quorn burgers reminded us of meals we ate in these places, veggie - but a little bit special!

Firstly, here is a picture of the burger mix once everything was together in one bowl and I was about to start shaping:

The burger mix is essentially quorn mince, breadcrumbs (the recipe calls for wholemeal but I used ciabatta as I had some in the freezer), softened onion and rosemary, marmite dissolved in boiling water, egg, soft cheese and grated cheddar. It makes, as you can see, a very sticky and quite wet mixture although it does take a lot of stirring to get it to this point and it is essential that the soft cheese is distributed evenly all the way through it.

The recipe states that this mix makes approximately 8 burgers of a 2cm depth each. I used a round metal cookie cutter to shape mine, pushing a handful of mix into it quite firmly so that my burgers looked like this:

The mix made 5 substantial burgers for me but obviously you could have smaller and more if you shaped them differently. I was impressed at how the mix held its shape at this stage - although you do have to be a little careful with them.

You then fry them in a little oil for around 4 minutes on each side. Make sure the pan is hot before you start as they seal very well if you do this and you lessen the risk of them falling apart (we had very little problem with this). Here is what they look like once flipped, you can see that they brown quite noticably, keep an eye on them and watch the time, the 4 mins per side seems to be bang on to me.

So, once they have had the necessary cooking time you can transfer them to your bread rolls or pittas. This is what they look like served in baps and then as I ate them (thinking of weight watchers) with half a bap each.

Verdict? Absolutely delicous and well worth the faff. The texture is pretty amazing and so much more like a meat burger than the pre-made standard veggie burgers you can buy. The cheese in them really stands out and gives these a really deep and rich flavour which is also juicy and intense. The seasoning could be easily adapted in the recipe, I added a pinch of chilli to ours and it worked really well so feel free to tinker when you cook off the onion with the herbs at the beginning of the recipe.

In terms of weight watchers points, the entire recipe works out as 22 points based on the following: quorn mince (4), oil (4), breadcrumbs (4), grated cheddar (5), low fat soft cheese (2), egg (2), marmite (1). The reason I have given you the full recipe points is that you may make more or less burgers than I did, divide the 22 by the number of burgers so that it is right for you.

My husband was determined these got a 10/10 and I have to say I am in agreement with him on this occasion. A clever, enjoyable recipe to make and a delightful end result to make a burger which could deservedly and proudly compete with meat products - but with the added benefit of containing considerably less fat!

This is definitely one I will make again and has been one of the best recipes to date from the book.